Aleksandar Hemon's "Szmura's Room"

I'm seemingly the very last lit blogger to either link to or read this story, which is inexcusable given my strong fondness for Hemon's writing. But I'm finally rectifying my errors. The story is classic Hemon, excellent and well worth anyone's time. Once again, Hemon has created an unforgettable character, this time a Ukrainian hustler named Mike Szmura--loan shark, aspiring FBI agent, caddish Don Juan and slumlord to the recent immigrant Bogdan:

As small as the room was, it echoed with emptiness. Bogdan parked his suitcases flat in the windowless corner, took a sheet and a blanket out of the unroped one, and spread them under the murky window—unequipped with mattress or duvet, this was where he would sleep. The room resembled an installation in a vacuous art gallery: the reflection of the ceiling bulb on the wood floor signifying the false surface of existence, the felled suitcases embodying the transitory nature of life—or, more specifically, the life of the subject, shrimped up in the corner against a bare, mispainted wall.

It's been nearly two years since Nowhere Man came out, and I'm itching for a new novel from Hemon, one of contemporary literature's most distinctive voices.