With an engrossing narrative, engaging warmth and refreshing humour,
'Nowhere Man' brings to life a protagonist whose way of looking at and living
in the world provokes an exhilarating sense of seeing it anew.This is what we know about Jozef Pronek from reading of his exploits in The
Question of Bruno: he is a young man from Sarajevo who arrived in the US in
1992, just in time to watch war break out back home on TV. Stranded in Chicago,
he proved himself a charming and perceptive observer of - and participant in -
American life. Now, with Nowhere Man, Pronek, accidental urban nomad, gets his
own book. From the grand causes of Jozef's adolescence - principally, fighting
to change the face of rock and roll and struggling to lose his virginity - up
through a fleeting encounter with George Bush (the first) in Kiev, to enrolment
in a Chicago English-language class and the glorious adventures of minimum-wage
living, Pronek's experiences are at once touchingly familiar and bracingly
out-of-the-ordinary. But the story of his life is not as simple as a series of
global adventures. Pronek is continually haunted by an unseen observer, his
movements chronicled by narrators with dubious motives - all of which
culminates in a final episode that subverts many of our assumptions about
Pronek's identity, while illustrating precisely what it means to be a Nowhere
Man.
