The Making of Zombie Wars

Dreadfully, wrigglingly, antisocially funny . . . Hemon's work often crackles with humour, but it's never been this uproarious. * Spectator * Exhilaratingly astute. * Sunday Times * Hemon is remarkable for his playful, loving and endlessly generative relationship with language. * Guardian * [Hemon's] writing is always worthy of your time. A purse slumps on a chair "like a deflated heart, and just as full of secrets." A woman's lips are "more than full, much better than thick. Lips, like clouds, forced cliches upon you." . . . Every page contains these sorts of pleasures. * New York Times Book Review * Hemon's writing style is as vital and rewarding as ever . . . The kind of writing that pulls you in and holds you there. * San Francisco Chronicle * The Making of Zombie Wars doesn't have much to do with the undead, but it's a comic novel with BRAAAINS. That intellectual heft is to be expected . . . But Hemon is also a master at camouflaging the deeper elements of this novel amid its tomfoolery. * Washington Post * A delightful ride through an ordinary life kicking into high, crazy gear. With zombies -- Carolyn Kellogg * Los Angeles Times * Hemon (Nowhere Man, The Lazarus Project, Love and Obstacles) mixes just the right amount of dark wit, apocalyptic foreboding and emotional insight. * Seattle Times * An eccentric comedy, albeit one with the same level of subtlety and resonance we're accustomed to from Hemon, a MacArthur "genius grant" winner . . . The wit and intelligence of The Making of Zombie Wars should please Hemon fans and entice new readers. * BookPage * Brutal but darkly hilarious . . . Hemon has always had a gift for humor, but he's never written anything as raucously funny and surreal as this . . . Endlessly entertaining . . . The Making of Zombie Wars is crazy in the best sense of the word, and very few authors could have pulled it off. * National Public Radio * A breezy and funny examination of what happens when a man who's "hungry for notable experiences" doesn't anticipate the consequences of acquiring those experiences. * Slate * A raucous, hilarious book . . . deadly funny. Hemon's wry jokes come out in perfectly turned sentences. * Chicago Magazine * Spinozan philosophy meets screwball comedy in this eccentric, subtly experimental novel by Hemon. * Publishers Weekly * Droll humor has always been one weapon in MacArthur fellow and PEN/Sebald Award winner Hemon's (The Book of My Lives, 2013) mighty literary arsenal, but he hasn't unleashed the full magnitude of his comedic powers until now . . . Zestfully funny. * Booklist (starred review) * What is exceptionally impressive about this novel is the deft control of different registers. It is like watching someone juggle with Sabatier knives. While wisecracking . . . Caustic and tender, enraged and forgiving, giggly and plaintive. * Scotland on Sunday * [The Making of Zombie Wars] deals with a remarkable range of serious, and some less serious, topics-sex, death, family, war, the Bush Cheney years, immigration, morality, America, zombies, and the meaning of life-without ever being didactic or sententious . . . What soon becomes clear is that the jokes in Hemon's novel are not just jokes, but about something larger, whether political, philosophical, or moral. Like all the best comedy, the novel makes it impossible not to sense the melancholy beneath the sullenness and absurdity. Hemon's wit prevents the novel's often emotional passages from seeming sensational or sentimental, while an intensity of feeling keeps the funny bits from appearing easy or shallow . . . A troubling, mysterious, lyrical elegy to the world in which the living struggle to maintain their fragile truce with the undead. * New York Review of Books * It's not every day you read a novel that moves effortlessly between references to the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, eruptions of the crazed undead, a po-faced TV image of George Bush, sidewinding literary reference

Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Book of My Lives, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and three books of short stories, including Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Genius Grant from the MacArthur Foundation. He lives in Chicago.