Author Aleksandar Hemon and The Lazarus Project

In the May 2008 issue of North Shore magazine, Northwestern professor Aleksandar Hemon, winner of MacArthur genius grant in 2004, discusses his new book, The Lazarus Project. In the interview, he answers the question of the origin of Lazarus Averbuch's story:
"I came across it in the book by Walter Roth and Joe Kraus called An Accidental Anarchist, which very concisely and grippingly lays out the Averbuch story. The true story, however, is rather different from what you can find in my book. What interested me in the Averbuch story was its sadness, on the one hand, and, on the other, the pictures of the dead Lazarus, which are unbearably cruel and incredibly affecting."
Hemon’s book is partially based on the life of Lazarus Averbuch. On March 2, 1908, nineteen-year-old Lazarus Averbuch, a recent Jewish immigrant from Russia to Chicago, knocked on the front door of the house of George Shippy, the chief of Chicago police. When Shippy came to the door, Averbuch offered him what he said was an important letter. Instead of taking the letter, Shippy shot Averbuch twice, killing him. When Shippy released a statement casting Averbuch as a would-be anarchist assassin and agent of foreign political operatives, he all but set off a city and a country already simmering with ethnic and political tensions. Now, in the twenty-first century, a young writer in Chicago, Brik, becomes obsessed with Lazarusas story — what really happened, and why? In order to understand Averbuch, Brik and his friend Rora retrace Averbuch's path across Eastern Europe
From a Washington Post Review "The Lazarus Project, the masterful new novel from the Bosnian-American writer Aleksandar Hemon, opens with a passage that recalls the invocations of epic poetry: 'The time and place,' Hemon tells us, 'are the only things I am certain of: March 2, 1908, Chicago. Beyond that is the haze of history and pain, and now I plunge.' Which muses Hemon invoked in writing this troubling, funny and redemptive..."
The Fremont Public Library has 2 copies of the book, one a regular circulating copy (3 weeks) and one a bestseller browsing copy (one week, cannot be renewed or reserved.