THE LAZARUS PROJECT

Jefferson Mays delivers irony and outrage in calm, controlled tones that belie the passion of Vladimir Brik's first-person narrative. Brik, a Bosnian writer living in present-day America, struggles to bury his shame that his surgeon wife is his family's primary breadwinner. Understanding himself comes largely through researching the story of Lazarus Averbuch, a Jewish immigrant wrongly murdered as an anarchist in 1908 Chicago. Jefferson Mays’s clipped narration is appropriate for the three parts of the novel that are woven together: Brik’s remembrances of his own life, the imagined scenes of Lazarus's life, and Brik’s experiences in Eastern Europe with Rora, a Bosnian war photographer, as they retrace the locales of Lazarus’s life. Mays's words hit with the power of an automatic weapon, emphasizing Hemon's elegant, energetic, and sometimes-shocking style. S.W. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2009]