The Lazarus Project

Aleksander Hemon's The Lazarus Project is written in two different time frames; one in the past, written about the murder of Lazarus Averbuch, and Eastern European Jewish immigrant, and the other, in the present, from the perspective of Brik, a writer from Chicago who hopes to ignite his career as a writer through his first novel about the Lazarus Project. This style of writing is interesting yet sometimes confusing to me; while I enjoy it because it keeps me interesting by jumping back and forth and always keeping me on my toes, it also is sometimes more challenging to keep up with because the two stories tend to jumble together in my mind. However, overall I enjoy the novel thus far. I particularly like the relationship between Brik and Rora; I feel as though Rora is the kind of character that everyone believes has a fantastic life and they aspire to be more like him, but in reality his life is much more complicated and far from perfect. I hope that as the story continues we learn more about the true identity of Rora. In addition, I like how Brik is constantly comparing Lazarus Averbuch to the biblical Lazarus. While I know very little about the biblical Lazarus, Briks' interpretation of the similarities between the two and their sisters seem to parallel. I am intrigued by the novel and enjoy it more than most other things we've read so far this semester.