Aleksandar Hemon, "The Bees, Part 1" (Bosnia)

It’s December 10. Welcome back to the 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar—a literary globetrotting adventure featuring 25 stories from 25 different countries.

Our editor, Alberto Manguel, is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

Here he is on Aleksandar Hemon’s story, “The Bees, Part 1”:

One of the foremost writers of his generation, Aleksandar Hemon brings to American literature the weight of his Bosnian past. His literature is firmly grounded in the land to which his parents emigrated, but the imagery of his writing is tinged with ancestral Balkan memories. In this story, the Bosnian bee-keeper father, who hates literature because it’s about things that never happened, tries to create a film “that would not lie.” The chronicle of his efforts depicts the breaking down of barriers between desired reality and absurd facts, and gives us a withering example of unintentional human cruelty.

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What did you think of today's story? Use the hashtag #ssac2021 on Twitter and Instagram to check in with your fellow advent calendarians. And check back tomorrow for commentary on the next story!