
Sasha Hemon, recipient of a MacArthur Genius grant for writing and the soccer columnist for The New Republic, watches the World Cup game between Germany and Spain at his home in Chicago.
Sally Ryan/Chicago News Cooperative
From Nelson Algren to Saul Bellow, Chicago has produced a succession of writers who found their muse in the city’s boisterous neighborhoods, its rich cast of characters, its nervy, urgent energy.
Aleksandar Hemon may be next in this distinguished line. He has already won a MacArthur “genius” award, and his most recent novel, “The Lazarus Project,” was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2008. When critics search for comparisons to him, they routinely invoke Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov — Eastern Europeans who, like Mr. Hemon, came to English as a second language.
Mr. Hemon is grateful for the accolades, but on Wednesday afternoon, he was infinitely more interested in the outcome of the titanic struggle between Germany and Spain in a World Cup semifinal game. (more…)