The Question of Bruno is set in Chicago and Bosnia. It is a book about the desolation of war, and how an exile makes a new life in a new land. Its themes range from the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand to the art of dodging sniper fire in a modern city under siege; from the Sarajevo Olympics to the Napoleonic Wars.
Whether Hemon is writing of a small boy in communist Yugoslavia who believes his father is a spy, or of a Bosnian immigrant in America sacked from a diner for an inability to distinguish between romaine and iceberg lettuce, he is both painfully funny and heartbreakingly sad. He writes with a wit and elegance and lightness of touch that will ensure him a place alongside Nabokov and Kundera.