Another wonderful read which I swiped off the table at the Kulturkaufhaus Dussmann in Berlin - I did not think it would have been translated into English, but here it is!
It's a story about a boy, Aleksander, who grows up in Visegrad in former Yugoslavia, where, shortly after the death of his grandfather, the war breaks out, and in time he and his family flee to Germany.
The book describes a magical boy's childhood, where he goes fishing with his grandfather who is a convinced communist, how he argues with his teacher at the school when the picture of Tito is taken down from the classroom wall, huge family gatherings with a page-and-a-half of the description of the menu....and very gently it slides into a child's view of the war, where people shelter in the basement of high-rise buildings, neighbours suddenly become enemies, people are killed in ways too cruel to imagine....before the journey to Germany, where Alexander grows up.
Then, rather surprisingly, the book's second part seems to tell the same story again, but differently - it's as if the first part is autobiography (though it probably is not, even though the author and the main protagonist share the same name), and the second part is the main protagonist's book that he writes; but knowing the first part is essential to the understanding of the second part.
The style of writing is magical - I've read a few books from south eastern Europe, and they all have a peculiar style in common - where the story is written in what seems to be a very plain way, but it's full of little clusterbombs (unfortunate association here) filled with absolute, often bizarre and very funny, gems. Reminds a bit of the films of Kusturica, though it's perhaps not quite as bizarre as his. This is even shown in his chapter headings, eg 'how sweet is dark read, how many oxen are needed for a wall, why Krajlevic Marko's horse is related to superman, and how it can be that a war comes to a party'.
Well worth getting, either in English or in German.
It's a story about a boy, Aleksander, who grows up in Visegrad in former Yugoslavia, where, shortly after the death of his grandfather, the war breaks out, and in time he and his family flee to Germany.
The book describes a magical boy's childhood, where he goes fishing with his grandfather who is a convinced communist, how he argues with his teacher at the school when the picture of Tito is taken down from the classroom wall, huge family gatherings with a page-and-a-half of the description of the menu....and very gently it slides into a child's view of the war, where people shelter in the basement of high-rise buildings, neighbours suddenly become enemies, people are killed in ways too cruel to imagine....before the journey to Germany, where Alexander grows up.
Then, rather surprisingly, the book's second part seems to tell the same story again, but differently - it's as if the first part is autobiography (though it probably is not, even though the author and the main protagonist share the same name), and the second part is the main protagonist's book that he writes; but knowing the first part is essential to the understanding of the second part.
The style of writing is magical - I've read a few books from south eastern Europe, and they all have a peculiar style in common - where the story is written in what seems to be a very plain way, but it's full of little clusterbombs (unfortunate association here) filled with absolute, often bizarre and very funny, gems. Reminds a bit of the films of Kusturica, though it's perhaps not quite as bizarre as his. This is even shown in his chapter headings, eg 'how sweet is dark read, how many oxen are needed for a wall, why Krajlevic Marko's horse is related to superman, and how it can be that a war comes to a party'.
Well worth getting, either in English or in German.
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