Historical Narratives, Fictional Biographies, and Biblical Allusions in Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project as a New Literary Hybrid

Abstract

ENG: The article proposes a new perception of The Lazarus Project (2008) by Aleksandar Hemon. Literary transformation of the past events in light of historical experience, their reinterpretation, and adoption appear within the novel in the forms of history representation and memory production. The author's position in the book is actualised through its structure with alternating chapters and realised in two conflicting identities: a historian who just records events, and a creator who builds up the conditioned reality of the characters' world. The analysis of the novel's structure displays the hybridity of narrative strategies in historical, fictional, and biblical dimensions. Including photography in literary hybridisation highlights a means through which the forms of the representation of the author's worldview get separated from existing practices and recombine with new ones. The conjunction of biography, photography, space and time frames in The Lazarus Project refers to a specific type of narration that underlines its transnational character. The article also deconstructs the examples of biblical allusions and as direct so indirect references to the Bible that can be a way of transcending historical barriers. Originality in research of Hemon's novel as a representative of migrant literature consists in revealing the influence of transcultural narratives of contemporary postcolonial fiction on the migrant identity. The application of an interdisciplinary approach intends to demonstrate the diversity of narratives in the book as an original piece of postmodern metafiction.