The Lazarus Project
Pain is found in the parallels
The book The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon follows writer Vladimir Brik as he investigates a murder that occurred a hundred years before the publishing of this story. After receiving a grant to go explore the story of the Lazarus Averbuch murder, Hemon’s writing follows two story lines: Lazarus Averbuch’s death and the brutal aftermath that sparked from a fear of immigrants and outside cultures, and the story of Brik and his childhood photographer friend Rora’s trip to Europe and Brik’s writing process as he investigates the Averbuch death 100 years later. Hemon comments on the immigrant experience through the many parallels he draws between two immigrant stories that occurred 100 years apart, noting that the horrors and the feelings are still the same.
Historical Background
A commonality in all of Hemon’s work is that his main characters are immigrants from war torn countries now living in the U.S. but struggling with identity and adapting to the new environment. Both characters in Hemon’s story, Lazarus Averbuch and Vladamir Brik, are immigrants who found themselves in Chicago after leaving their war torn countries.
The Averbuch siblings fled their home without their parents in order to survive the anti-Jewish pogroms that began at the turn of the 19th century. From the stories Averbuch’s sister Olga tells in the book, it’s clear that the two siblings had a close relationship and that Olga took over the mother-figure role for Lazarus. Despite successfully fleeing a dangerous situation at home, though, the two siblings were met with trouble when they immigrated because in America, a heavy fear of immigrants and foreign ideas and cultures was sweeping the nation. Consequently, the two faced class segregation and anti-semitic attitudes, which led Lazarus to a fascination with the anarchist movement. His fixation on the subject is what eventually leads him to Chief Shippy’s house the morning he would be shot and killed.
The character of Vladimir Brik seems to parallel Aleksandar Hemon’s story quite closely. Brik is a Bosnian-American who found himself in America on a tourist visa, but then was forced to stay in America after war broke out in his home country. Brik ends up marrying a successful American surgeon and continues to live in America. But he still continues to struggle, which is where the parallels between Brik and Lazarus start to come in. Brik, throughout the story, struggles with his at times crippling sadness. At the time, America was still feeling the tension left after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. so Brik also deals with some anti-immigration idealists, including his own father-in-law, who accepts him but still makes off comments every now and then.
The Man Behind The Masterpiece
The author of The Lazarus Project is Aleksandar Hemon. Hemon was born and raised in Sarajevo, a major city of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At 26 years old, Hemon graduated from the University of Sarajevo with a BA in literature and then pursued a career in journalism. In 1992, Hemon travelled to the United States as part of a journalist exchange program. The Bosnian War broke out that same year. Due to the violent unrest in his home country, Hemon was granted status as a refugee. He settled in Chicago, Illinois.
Thus, Hemon began his life in America. He learned the English language, worked a series of jobs, and received a Master’s Degree from Northwestern University. After three years in the United States, Hemon wrote his first short story in English, “The Sorge Spy Ring.” This work was included in a collection called The Question of Bruno, published in 2000. His second book, Nowhere Man, followed in 2002. His next major publication was The Lazarus Project, released in 2008. Hemon’s works also include books of nonfiction, essays, journalism, screenplays, and content for the Netflix show Sense8.
Much of Hemon’s work explores similar themes of refugeeism, exile, and the concept of home, using characters inspired by his own experiences as an immigrant. His writing embodies the sense of displacement often felt by foreign individuals in the culture of the United States. His novel of historical fiction, The Lazarus Project, is a prime example of this voice coming to life.
Two Sides to the Story
The Lazarus Project couples two stories of Eastern European immigrants who each came to Chicago one century apart.
The novel is narrated by Vladimir Brik, who is the protagonist of the modern day storyline. Brik is a young aspiring writer who came from Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United States in 1990, and decides to stay after war broke out in his home country — a story much akin to that of Aleksandar Hemon, himself.
Brik becomes infatuated with the historical case of Lazarus Averbuch, a Russian-born Jewish immigrant to Chicago who was shot and killed by the city Chief of Police on March 2nd, 1908. The exact circumstances that led to Lazarus’ death remain contested, and Brik wants to find out more about who the young boy was and why his life ended so tragically. Brik receives a generous grant that allows him to travel and investigate the life of Lazarus before coming to Chicago. He invites an old friend and skilled photographer, Rora, to come along and document the trip.
Chapter by chapter, the novel flashes between the time of Lazarus’ death and Brik’s investigation of his life. The sections are separated by photographs that situate the reader in the time and place of the pages that follow. The modern day plotline is narrated in the first-person by Brik, and the historical plot takes the third-person perspective focusing on the aftermath of Lazarus’ death. These sections mostly revolve around his older sister Olga’s dealings with law enforcers and journalists who have been put on Lazarus’ case.
As the two storylines progress, readers come to realize that although times have changed, the experience of the immigrant to America remains much the same. Both Brik and Lazarus had to abandon their home countries to escape civil turmoil. Despite taking refuge in America, the characters all exist with constant threats of war lingering over their heads.They each end up feeling let down by their pursuit of “The American Dream” because of wealth gaps and discrimination. The public distrust of Jews mirrors the present day attitudes towards Muslims, which is referenced through Rora’s character. Through exploring consistent themes such as anarchism, religion, friendships and romance, warfare and identity, the two storylines become inextricably linked.
Photography: a gray area
The events surrounding Lazarus Averbuch’s death were well-documented with photographs, as shown in both the novel The Lazarus Project, and Hemon’s source for the photographs, the Chicago Historical Society. The documentation of such an incident was not a pleasant experience for Olga, whose life after her brother’s death was filled with detectives, journalists, and photographers.
One of the first scenes with Olga involved her hearing of the death of her brother; however, the officials on the case decided to show rather than tell. She walked into a room where her brother sat on a chair, in a way that made it seem like he could still be alive. At the realization that it was a corpse and not her brother, she fainted, and was taken outside to breathe. In those moments, her shock and grief were treated as entertainment, and her experience was witnessed by journalists and photographers.
“‘That must have been a big surprise for you, girlie,’ Fitzpatrick says. They hear the booms of the photographer’s flash inside.”
The photographs taken of Lazarus’s corpse made the front page of the Tribune, along with the headline, “The Anarchist Type.”
The trend of Olga being terrorized by journalists continued when the journalist Miller entered her apartment with a photographer to inform her that her brother’s body had been stolen. No sympathy for Olga is shown, only the cold truth and the photographer setting up his camera in the corner of the room and asking Miller to please, move her into better lighting, as if she was not a real person at all, but just a character in the story they were telling.
“Olga is out of breath, gasping. A throe climbs from her heel to her spine to lodge itself in her skull. The camera flash goes off, a cloudlet of acrid smoke drifts towards the bedroom.”
One hundred years later, in 2008, a much different approach to photography can be observed. Vladimir Brik’s old friend from school in Bosnia becomes Brik’s photographer during his research into Lazarus’s story. Rora’s photography, unlike the journalist photographer, is not intrusive or cold. Rora uses his camera almost like an extension of his body, as if it is just another way to engage with people.
While the journalist found ways to capture Olga’s grief, when given the opportunity, Rora does the exact opposite. When Brik and Rora visit a museum during their travels to see if they could find anything about the Averbuch family, they meet a guide named Iuliana. When Brik tells her about the story of Lazarus, she is filled with grief, and even tears up. Brik thinks, “I very much wanted Rora to take a photograph of Iuliana in her permanent, indelible grief…” Instead, Rora stands off to the side of this heartbreaking moment, and changes the film in his camera, to ensure that he is not taking any photos of her vulnerability.
Rora is shown to have a deep understanding of his own photography, what he photographs, and why he photographs it. However, Brik is still learning as he watches Rora, and his thoughts on photography change throughout the book.
When Brik first meets Rora, Rora is photographing an event Brik is at. He is taking many photographs, and when Brik greets him, he acknowledges the way that Rora is attached to his camera: “…he held his Canon camera, flash facing down, like an idle gun.” This may be an insight to how Brik views the camera at first, as a sort of weapon. When they began to travel together, Brik had a tendency to imagine how the photographs would turn out when developed, but nearing the end of their trip, he did not care as much.
“Now I didn’t care about the future in which I would be looking at Rora’s photos. The pictures would offer me no revelations; I would have seen all that mattered already, because I was present at the time of their creation…”
Photography takes on an important role in the narrative, so it would only make sense that the book would have actual photographs incorporated into it. However, Hemon takes a minimal approach to which photographs are included and when.
A photograph appears at the beginning of each chapter, always in black and white, and always on a black page. The photos never have captions or explanations, only occasional handwritten notes on the photographs, and they are never referenced in the text. However, they are related, as the photographs usually show the setting of the upcoming chapter or the characters involved. Some photographs are more ambiguous than others — blurry and dark, they set tone more than provide more information for the reader.
Though the use of photographs is minimal, they do affect how the reader interprets the story. The photographs come from two sources; one being the Chicago Historical Society, and the other being Hemon’s photographer for the book, Velibor Bozovic. Some photographs help the transition between the 1908 and 2008 storylines, as Hemon switches back and forth between each chapter. However, the black and white images across the board may confuse the reader at times. This might be a help more than a hindrance, due to the exploration of the similarities of the lives of the Averbuch family and Brik and Rora, despite the one-hundred-year difference.
The use of photographs from the Lazarus case also grounds the book in reality. Since Brik’s story is fiction, it is easy to forget that Olga and Lazarus Averbuch were real people. An example of this is the disturbing photograph of Lazarus’s body being held up, almost like a puppet. While the photograph is not gory, it does invoke a deep sense of fear and sadness, due to its use alongside Olga’s tragic circumstances.
The Lazarus Project is an exploration of photography as much as it is a story. Hemon questions how photography should be used by showing what distress it can cause and what light it can bring.
Some Final Thoughts
The Lazarus Project is a one-of-a-kind narrative for its distinctive structure, use of compelling photographs, and for revealing stark realities about both history and the seemingly timeless troubles faced by immigrants. What is perhaps most unique about this work is its authenticity. Hemon’s voice surely evokes a sense of sincerity, but after learning more about his own past and how he channels it in The Lazarus Project, the reader will become all-the-more consumed with his writing. In reading this novel, audiences are thrust back and forth between two seemingly different worlds that end up being more similar than not as the pages go on. The two plot lines are gripping in their own respects; the characters and settings seem to come to life; and the references to real events make the experience of reading The Lazarus Project feel almost real.
Sources
Cole, Rachel. Aleksandar Hemon: Bosnian American Author. Brittanica.com. 2019. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aleksandar-Hemon
Princeton University. Aleksandar Hemon: Professor of Creative Writing. Lewis Center Arts. 2018. Retriever from https://arts.princeton.edu/people/profiles/ahemon/
MacArthur Foundation. Aleksandar Hemon. Macfound.org. September 28th, 2004. Retrieved from https://www.macfound.org/fellows/733/
