Saša Stanišić

I love the voice, the tone, the story, the... everything. First-person child voices are so difficult to do well, even when they are grounded in your own childhood. Playful with language in the way of those who have to relearn the world in another idiom. Creative, fragmented but whole, so specific and also so relevant to anyone who has lived through a world changing suddenly. I only wish I'd read this earlier, and maybe in the original.
Ok well that's not really a review, maybe I'll write one later.… (more)

This was Saša Stanišić’s first novel, focusing mainly on his early life in Višegrad and his childhood experience of the Bosnian war. In a patchwork of stories, pastiche school essays, and even a novel within a novel, the narrator Aleksandar tells us about his family connections, Serbian and Muslim, his rural grandparents, his neighbours in the town of Višegrad and the river he fishes in and talks to. Ivo Andrić is always there in the background, as is the famous bridge, of course. But the main theme, of course, is the puzzling and distressing experience of finding yourself caught up in a bloody conflict between groups you barely had any reason to identify as distinguishable groups before.

Clever and sophisticated writing: it’s no surprise that Herkunft turned out to be such a tour-de-force… (more)

I am so confused about where this book falls on the spectrum of novel--memoir. It reads like a memoir that is based solely on childhood memory, impressions, and stories remembered and less on research (with family, with newspapers, etc) to find "the truth". Because, obviously, every person experiences their own truth--and childhood and long-ago truth can easily be distorted.

Stanisic was born in Yugoslavia (now Bosnia) and his family moved to Germany as refugees during the war in Yugoslavia. He is the narrator/main character of the book. In chapters of varying length he considers his childhood, what leaving did for and to his parents and grandparents. How they adjusted to Germany and how he did--they lost their careers and struggled with language, and he writes in German. Then his parents' being deported, his grandmother returning to Bosnia when she was deported (post-war). His fighting to get the paperwork to allow himself to stay in Germany--never considering, at the time, what his parents thought as they left for Florida. Much of the last half of the book his his grandmother's descent into dementia.

The overall tone of this book is wistfulness. Wondering who he and his parents might have been if there was no war, missing the camaraderie of his high school friends in Germany (from Yugo, Italy, Poland, Turkey, Germany). Missing his grandparents and the Bosnian traditions he never really learned; watching his grandmother deteriorate from afar. Interestingly, this book does not feel angry--this is not a book angry at the different factions in the former Yugoslavia or anger at people in Germany who mocked his name or accent (as so many North American immigration stories are). Rather it's an exploration of how it was and a recognition of his family's luck (his mother was warned by an acquaintance) and perhaps a touch of survivor's guilt. The little obvious anger in this book is focused on his grandmother's dementia.

The Choose-You-Own-Adventure bit at the end? Not for me, but I do wonder if Stanisic wrote that first, and then it morphed into the book.… (more)