The Sarajevo-born fiction writer, whose adopted hometown is Chicago, has one of the most distinctive voices in literature. The essays in his first book of nonfiction are sardonic and knowing, trustworthy yet tart. He writes of the disruption that came with his younger sister's birth in 1969 and of his fanatical passion for soccer. (One essay is titled If God Existed He'd Be a Solid Middlefielder.) He writes of being stranded in Chicago as his family fled Sarajevo, and of returning to that transformed city in 1997. He explains his devotion to his new hometown: "The way people in the winter huddle together under the warming lights of the Granville El stop, much like young chickens under a lightbulb." In the searing and unforgettable The Aquarium, he documents with unflinching clarity the "dark universe of pain" he experiences as his baby daughter dies from a rare brain cancer. The essays are profoundly personal, but somehow universal. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)