Girl at War
by Sara Novic
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Pub Date 21 May 2015 | Archive Date 19 Apr 2016
Little, Brown Book Group UK | Little, Brown
Description
****Longlisted for the 2016 Baileys Women's Fiction Prize****
The lead debut title for Little, Brown/Abacus in 2015, for fans of Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi AdicheGrowing up in Zagreb in the summer of 1991, 10-year-old Ana Juric is a carefree tomboy; she runs the streets with her best friend, Luka, helps take care of her baby sister, Rahela, and idolizes her father. But when civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, football games and school lessons are supplanted by sniper fire and air raid drills.
The brutal ethnic cleansing of Croats and Bosnians tragically changes Ana's life, and she is lost to a world of genocide and child soldiers; a daring escape plan to America becomes her only chance for survival. Ten years later she returns to Croatia, a young woman struggling to belong to either country, forced to confront the trauma of her past and rediscover the place that was once her home.
Girl At War is a haunting, compelling debut from a brilliant young writer, rooted in historical fact and personal experience. Sara has lived in the States and Croatia, and her novel bears witness to the haunting stories of her family and friends who lived through the height of the conflict, and reflects her own attempts to come to terms with her relationship to Croatia and its history. It is an extraordinary achievement for a novelist of any age, let alone age 26.
A Note From the Publisher
Requests from UK readers only please.
Advance Praise
This vivid debut recalls Half of a Yellow Sun . . . will leave you reeling - Stylist
An unforgettable portrait of how war forever changes the life of the individual, Girl at War is a remarkable debut by a writer working with deep reserves of talent, heart, and mind. - Gary Shteyngart
Intimate, crushingly brutal, and beautiful at once, Girl at War is the work of someone far more mature than her years. It constitutes signal proof that even great history is insufficient to tell the story of the twentieth century in Europe: great fiction like this book is required too - Robert D. Kaplan, author of Balkan Ghosts and Asia’s Cauldron
A breathtaking debut. With piercing clarity and devastating wit, Novic traces the enduring fallout of a childhood interrupted by conflict. Girl at War is an unforgettable, deeply affecting meditation on identity and memory, loss and survival, and what it means to feel at home in the world. - Jennifer duBois, author of Cartwheel and A Partial History of Lost Causes
Girl at War depicts the still-fresh nightmare of the Serbo-Croatian war, survived by a girl much too young to know all she knows. Sara Novic writes with ruthless understatement not only about a modern city subjected to primitive horrors, but about young Ana's subsequent war against the American urge to forget. Sentence after perfectly-weighted sentence, her prose lands with the sound of a gavel. The first fifty pages might be the best fifty pages you read this year. - Jonathan Dee
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781408706541 |
| PRICE | £16.99 (GBP) |
Featured Reviews
lorraine b, Reviewer
Zagreb, summer of 1991. Ten-year-old Ana Juric is a carefree tomboy who runs the streets of Croatia’s capital with her best friend, Luka, takes care of her baby sister, Rahela, and idolizes her father. But as civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, soccer games and school lessons are supplanted by sniper fire and air raid drills. When tragedy suddenly strikes, Ana is lost to a world of guerilla warfare and child soldiers; a daring escape plan to America becomes her only chance for survival.
Ten years later Ana is a college student in New York. She’s been hiding her past from her boyfriend, her friends, and most especially herself. Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, she returns alone to Croatia, where she must rediscover the place that was once her home and search for the ghosts of those she’s lost. With generosity, intelligence, and sheer storytelling talent, Sara Nović’s first novel confronts the enduring impact of war, and the enduring bonds of country and friendship.
WOW - a beautifully written book - compelling reading. A must for the top book of 2015.
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