Hemon's critically acclaimed novel Nowhere Man (2002) follows the early life and emigration to the United States of Josef Pronek, the protagonist of the longest story of The Question of Bruno.

In Vladimir Nabokov's intriguing novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), the narrator searches for the essence of his half-brother but ends up raising more questions than he answers.

In Our Time (1925) is Ernest Hemingway's striking collection of early short stories, largely about a young man's experience growing up in the Michigan woods.

Viktor Meier's Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise (1999) provides an overview of the history of the former Yugoslavian states in order to analyze the devastating wars and ethnic conflicts that shook the region during the 1990s.