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How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Sasa Stanisic 2008 Seattle Times Best Book of the Year 2008 Los Angeles Times Favorite Book of the Year Selected as a July '08 Indie Next List title (formerly Book Sense) Longlisted for the Arts Council England’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize ISBN: 0-8021-4422-5 / ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-4422-5 US $14.00 - 5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 368 pp - May 2009 |
“A brilliant debut novel from a young Bosnian writer . . . Stanisic’s story is loaded on each page with galvanizing details, desperately making an inventory of an imperiled world. He maintains a delirious, jump-cut pace as words flash dark-to-light-to-dark, and sentences coil and snap, conjuring a macabre carnival atmosphere. . . . This crazy-quilt novel, a sensation in
“In Sasa Stanisic’s bittersweet, musical novel about a boy growing up in Bosnia-Herzogovina before and during the war, many things happen that are impossible to understand, startlingly visual, bordering on the surreal but all too real. . . . This is a funny, heartbreaking, beautifully written novel.”—Mary Brennan, The
“In his tale of childhood and war, Stanisic populates the river
“Displaying a stylistic audacity that is often dazzling . . . this debut novel mixes fictionalized memoir, magical realism and a Catch-22 sense of war’s tragicomic absurdity. . . . The innocence of Aleksandar, as he describes an upheaval that defies a young man’s understanding, is expertly filtered through the sensibility of a slightly older but still precocious novelist. . . . A novel rich with experience and imagination.”—Kirkus Reviews
“A lovely novel of the imagination . . . Through Aleksandar’s eyes, one of our most recent wars takes on a timeless and fantastical quality. . . . How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone is about stories left unfinished, the boy that the man left behind, the ellipsis in the Rabbi’s words left unspoken, innocence and memory left whole. . . . It is a book that revels in the child’s gift of making the usual unusual, and in doing so evokes the poignancy when this ability begins to fade. It is a book about war, an often comic and extemporizing view of war, and a book about memory, and a world lost.”—
“A beautifully written, virtuosic recounting of Bosnian life before and after
“The human consequences of war are brought home to the reader with an immediacy beyond the reach of more conventional accounts. . . . How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone sees Sasa Stanisic take his place alongside Ivo Andric as a transformer of tragic history into poignant art.”—Ian McGillis, The
“An original literary voice is exceptionally rare. Yet Bosnian Sasa Stanisic’s debut novel has an entrancing spirit all of its own.”—Financial Times
“How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone [is] an energetic, magical romp through a childhood interrupted—and shaped—by the Bosnian War . . . [without] relying on the sentimentality of innocence. . . . This profound novel will surely come to be recognized as a classic of the Bosnian war, if not a classic in its own right.”—Anne McPeak, Words Without Borders
“Immensely satisfying . . . A novel that owes as much a debt to Auster’s The New York Trilogy as it does to O’Brien’s The Things They Carried . . . [but] Stanisic’s flawless writing . . . propels the novel into uncharted depths. . . . His voice captures that feeling of awe and helplessness that are prevalent in any childhood, and distilled even further by the chilling intrusion of the forces of war. He coils anecdotes and narratives on top of one another, allowing for multiple perspectives on the events leading up to Aleksandar’s involuntary departure. . . . Those looking for an original take on the horrors of modern warfare will not be disappointed.”—Sean McCarthy, Lit Mob (4 out of 5 stars)
“[Stanisic] renders a child’s-eye view of war and dislocation . . . with a startling degree of success. . . . He has a fantastic talent for blending the mundane and the soul-shattering. To see his characters fretting over their Tetris scores while being shelled by unseen enemies is to understand that this can and does happen anywhere. But war isn’t Stanisic’s true subject. Nor is religious conflict. . . . [How the Solider Repairs the Gramophone] is above all a tribute to individuality, how the inner world of memory and invention must assert itself in the face of forces that divide and level. . . . [It is] a book that describes childhood without, as so many American novels do, glorifying childishness.”—Stefan Beck, BN.com
“A powerful story about escaping from the past . . . [How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone] compellingly asks how damage may be healed. . . . Stanisic bravely and ambitiously examines ways of perceiving history and identity in a war-torn world, and of leaving places and people behind while retaining respect for lost relationships.”—Anita Sethi, The Independent (
“Sasa Stanisic manages to be both funny and moving, showing both the initial horrors of the war and the awful depth of the scars it leaves behind. An impressive debut from a gifted young writer.”—The Big Issue
“Stanisic splinters apart his plot . . . like a shivered mirror—each fractured piece showing a different fragment of horror or memory. . . . Fans of more experimental writers such as Michael Ondaatje will want to pick up this deeply felt debut.”—Yvonne Zipp, The Christian Science Monitor
“The offensively gifted Sasa Stanisic, who’s either some kind of freak genius or utterly immersed in modernist and experimental fiction. Or maybe both. There are shades of Joyce here, and Pynchon too, but the whole retains a breathlessly unique, charmingly youthful and deliciously foreign voice. There is some kind of innate divine spark animating this story of childhood memories and the revisions of bloodied maturity. . . . The effect is astonishing. And the literary talent on show in this book is simply world-class.”—Irish Examiner
“How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone is a dazzling debut novel. . . . Stanisic is masterful; he combines innocence, humor, tragedy, wistfulness, and hope. . . . This novel is brilliant in the way that Catch-22, Clockwork Orange, and The Empire of the Sun were all brilliant. These novels make us see the world as it is and as it could be—a vision of grotesque, surreal human behavior in war—a killing world that ‘lies beneath God’s feet’ as though forsaken—and a vision of hope and redemption, with story as a saving grace.”—Mary Jo Anderson, the Chronicle Herald (
“For all the fun Stanišiæ has with his protagonist, he makes no attempt to sugarcoat the war’s horrifying violence and lingering psychological traumas. . . . A story that reveals the lingering scars of a conflict some Bosnians may rather forget. Aleksandar’s obsessive search for Asija, the girl he simply calls ‘Beautiful,’ becomes a convincing representation of the need for survivors to find moral clarity and personal resolution among the emotional and physical wreckage of war.”—Paul Whitlatch, Boldtype
“The organization of the book and the author’s brilliant use of language makes [How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone] an astonishing accomplishment. . . . Highly impressionistic . . . Enthralling, something you can’t put down.”—Dennis Lythgoe, Deseret News (
“Beyond succeeding as a compelling fictional account of the very real tragedy of a town in Bosnia-Herzegovina, [How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone] is also testament to the power of the imagination—and its limitations. . . . Stanisic’s tale will remain exceptional: A gifted storyteller, he’s able to translate unspeakably gruesome history into something poignant and hauntingly beautiful.”—Sidra Durst, The Village Voice
“Stanisic’s debut novel How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone will convert skeptics with the sheer force of its emotional power. . . . Stanisic’s perfectly chosen observations refract and amplify the horrifying, maddening surroundings, heightening both ends of the emotional spectrum, creating a story that, like war itself, is too large and chaotic to ever leave simply.”—Karla Starr, The Oregonian
“How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone is an accomplished, tragic-comic tale that magnificently captures the space between fantasy and reality.”—Three Percent
"Even with hindsight, the Clinton-era conflict in the Balkans remains a confusing mess of clashing ethnic, national, and religious identities. A handful of compelling stories about this period have been bubbling to the surface . . . [and] How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone stands out as one of the best . . . A challenging and haunted work."—Drew Toal, Time Out New York
“Stanisic’s talent blazes off page after page . . .That his tale contains so much natural, laugh-out-loud comedy speaks volumes for the author, whose autobiographical hero, Aleksandar, ‘somewhere between eight and fourteen,’ is a talkative, precocious delight, determinedly optimistic in the face of heartbreaking losses, forever making startling little observations on life that somehow get it all wrong and yet sort of right . . .Stanisic is so prodigiously full of big, open-hearted wisdom, I shudder to think what he has lived through to produce, at such an early age, such a transcendent little masterwork.”—Nick DiMartino, Shelf-Awareness
"Wildly imaginative storytelling. . . .Through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Aleksandar Krsmonovic, we witness a massacre perpetrated by Bosnian Serbs against their Muslim neighbors in the town of Visegrad in 1992. . . .Madcap flights of invention and comic exaggeration clash movingly with the painfully real chronicle of terror, loss, and exile at the story's heart. . . .Far from trivializing the terrible history, the fanciful style makes it all the more acute. . . .How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone bears witness to this horror with tragicomic intensity, reflecting the possibilities and limitations of fiction in the face of atrocity."—Ross Benjamin, Bookforum
"I love this book. It's funny and it's heartfelt and it's brazen and it's true. Find some space on your shelf beside Aleksandar Hemon, Jonathan Safran Foer, William Vollmann and David Foster Wallace. This is a great rattlebag of a book that will stay with you on whatever long journey you choose to go on. What a welcome voice rising up amongst the great voices. Sasa Stanisic. Or Sasha Stanishitch. We should all learn how to pronounce his name, because he's here to stay." —Colum McCann, author of Zoli and Dancer
"Aleksandar Krsmanovic tells stories of his home town Viegrad before and after violence forces his family to flee to Germany. The stories run together, between each other, and often interrupt another story that may finish later in the novel. It is Aleksandar’s attempt to follow his grandmother’s advice to remember everything from a time when the world was right. A great debut novel." —Jason Kennedy, Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop, Milwaukee
“An astounding first novel—broad-minded, dynamic, daring.” —Frankfurter Rundschau
“The novelistic debut of the year . . . [filled] with poetic and intoxicating language, and a burlesque panorama of loveable figures. An extravagant, theatrical, overboard, entirely great, and above all captivating book.” —Freie Press
"A magnificent feast of storytelling bestowed upon one unlucky Bosnian town. Sharp, funny, humane and sometimes even magical." —Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan
“How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone is the story of a childhood in Visegrad, a city on the Drina, in which Christians, Muslims, Bosnians, and Serbs are living together in a peaceful world—until politics, war, and unfathomable powers destroy it. How, in this book, Sasa Stanisic writes the stories of this city with such an incredible passion for invention and for storytelling, and how a short time later he allows this city to be devoured, at first by tiny details, then by hate, blood, and war—that is great art.” —Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung
“[The] voice of a bold young Europe…Brilliantly cockeyed prose that borders on the surreal—or maybe the psychedelic…. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“This astounding debut is . . . a story of the loss of homeland, the story of growing up during the time of war, and a family photo album of high-level humor. . . . This novel stands the world on its head, on quite a clever head. . . . We have much to look forward to in this novelist.” —Die Welt
“How The Soldier Repairs the Gramophone is a novel in the tradition of The Things They Carried. It is about war and stories, but it is not a traditional ‘war story’ per se. Sasa Stanisic has crafted a beautiful, complex novel about the conflict in Bosnia, his homeland, which defies the conventions of storytelling, and yet keeps the reader hanging on his every word. Stanisic shows us conflict through the eyes of a child: curious, impulsive, innocent. He also writes with the voice of someone who escaped the height of the conflict by emigrating to Germany, conveying the haunting and emotional reality of those who have left loved ones behind—those who ask, ‘Why not me?’ Stanisic is an immensely talented writer, and his first novel is not to be missed.”—Sandra Brown, Changing Hands Bookstore,