How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
Published on 1. September 2018
304 pages
978-1-55584-879-8 (ISBN)
Description
"A brilliant debut novel" about a young Bosnian War refugee who finds the secret to survival in language and stories (
Los Angeles Times).
For Aleksandar Krsmanovic, Grandpa Slavko's stories endow life in ViSegrad with a kaleidoscopic brilliance. Neighbors, friends, and family past and present take on a mythic quality; the River Drina courses through town like the pulse of life itself. So when his grandfather dies suddenly, Aleksandar promises to carry on the tradition. But then soldiers invade ViSegrad-a town previously unconscious of racial and religious divides-and it's no longer important that Aleksandar is the best magician in the nonaligned states; suddenly it is important to have the right last name and to convince the soldiers that Asija, the Muslim girl who turns up in his apartment building, is his sister.
Alive with the magic of childhood, the surreality of war and exile, and the power of language, every page of this glittering novel thrums with the joy of storytelling.
"Wildly inventive." - San Francisco Chronicle
"Poignant and hauntingly beautiful." - The Village Voice
"A funny, heartbreaking, beautifully written novel." - The Seattle Times
For Aleksandar Krsmanovic, Grandpa Slavko's stories endow life in ViSegrad with a kaleidoscopic brilliance. Neighbors, friends, and family past and present take on a mythic quality; the River Drina courses through town like the pulse of life itself. So when his grandfather dies suddenly, Aleksandar promises to carry on the tradition. But then soldiers invade ViSegrad-a town previously unconscious of racial and religious divides-and it's no longer important that Aleksandar is the best magician in the nonaligned states; suddenly it is important to have the right last name and to convince the soldiers that Asija, the Muslim girl who turns up in his apartment building, is his sister.
Alive with the magic of childhood, the surreality of war and exile, and the power of language, every page of this glittering novel thrums with the joy of storytelling.
"Wildly inventive." - San Francisco Chronicle
"Poignant and hauntingly beautiful." - The Village Voice
"A funny, heartbreaking, beautifully written novel." - The Seattle Times
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Sasa Stanisic
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
Book
05/2009
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
€14.00
Shipment within 10-20 days
Persons
The hardcover publication of How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone launched Stanisic as an exciting and important new voice in literary fiction and earned exuberant praise from readers and critics alike. Now in paperback, Stanisic's debut about a boy who experiences the Bosnian War and finds the secret to survival in language and stories is bound to dazzle a whole new readership.For Aleksandar Krsmanovic, Grandpa Slavko's stories endow life in ViSegrad with a kaleidoscopic brilliance. Neighbors, friends, and family past and present take on a mythic quality; the River Drina courses through town like the pulse of life itself. So when his grandfather dies suddenly, Aleksandar promises to carry on the tradition. But then soldiers invade ViSegrad-a town previously unconscious of racial and religious divides-and it's no longer important that Aleksandar is the best magician in the nonaligned states; suddenly it is important to have the right last name and to convince the soldiers that Asija, the Muslim girl who turns up in his apartment building, is his sister.Alive with the magic of childhood, the surreality of war and exile, and the power of language, every page of this glittering novel thrums with the joy of storytelling.
Content
- Intro
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- How long a heart attack takes over three hundred feet, how much a spider's life weighs, why a sad man writes to the cruel river, and what magic the Comrade in Chief of the unfinished can work
- How sweet dark red is, how many oxen you need to pull down a wall, why Kraljevic Marko's horse is related to Superman, and how war can come to a party
- Who wins when Walrus blows the whistle, what an orchestra smells of, when you can't cut fog, and how a story leads to an agreement
- When flowers are just flowers, how Mr. Hemingway and Comrade Marx feel about each other, who's the real Tetris champion, and the indignity suffered by Bogoljub Balvan's scarf
- When something is an event, when it's an experience, how many deaths Comrade Tito died, and how the once-famous three-point shooter gets behind the wheel of a Centrotrans bus
- What Milenko Pavlovic, known as Walrus, brings back from his wonderful trip, how the stationmaster's leg loses control of itself, what the French are good for, and why we don't need quotation marks
- Where bad taste in music gets you, what the three-dot-ellipsis man denounces, and how fast war moves once it really gets going
- What we play in the cellar, what peas taste like, why silence bares its fangs, who has the right sort of name, what a bridge will bear, why Asija cries, how Asija smiles
- How the soldier repairs the gramophone, what connoisseurs drink, how we're doing in written Russian, why chub eat spit, and how a town can break into splinters
- Emina carried through her village in my arms
- 26 April 1992
- 9 January 1993
- 17 July 1993
- 4 January 1994
- Hi. Who? Aleksandar! Hey, where are you calling from? Oh, not bad! Well, lousy, really, how about you?
- 16 December 1995
- What I really want
- 1 May 1999
- Aleksandar, I really, really want to send you this package
- When Everything was all Right
- Contents
- Foreword
- Ice cream
- Wish
- Parade
- 1 May 1989, or, The Chick in the Pioneer's Hand
- There are no Partisans now
- A wonderful trip
- How to disappear
- Why Cika Doctor cut the calf of someone's leg open
- Why Vukoje Worm whose nose has been broken three times doesn't break mine
- Why Cika Hasan and Cika Sead are inseparable, and what even those who know most about catfish can't count on
- How the game of chess relates to world politics, why Grandpa Slavko knows revolutions may come tomorrow, and how things can sometimes be so difficult to say
- The promise a dam must keep, what the most beautiful language in the world sounds like, and how often a heart must beat to beat shame
- Why houses are sympathetic and unselfish, what music they make, and why I want them to stay sympathetic and unselfish, and above all to stand firm
- What victory is the best, what Grandpa Slavko trusts me to do, and why people act as if your fears are less if you don't talk about them
- How the bold river Drina is feeling, how the lipless Drina is really feeling, what she thinks of little Mr. Rzav, and how little you need to be as happy as a falcon
- 11 February 2002
- I'm Asija. They took Mama and Papa away with them. My name has a meaning. Your pictures are horrible
- Out of three hundred and thirty Sarajevo numbers rung at random, about every fifteenth has an answering machine
- What makes the Wise Guys wise, how much you ought to bet on your own memory, who is found, and who is still made up
- What goes on behind God's feet, why Kiko picks up the cigarette, where Hollywood is, and how Mickey Mouse learns to answer
- I've made lists
- Comrade in Chief of all that's unfinished
- Acknowledgments
