Girl at War: A Novel

Girl at War: A Novel

For readers of The Tigerâ€™s Wife and All the Light We Cannot See comes a powerful debut novel about a girlâ€™s coming of ageâ€”and how her sense of family, friendship, love, and belonging is profoundly shaped by war.
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Zagreb, 1991. Ana JuriÄ‡ is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a small apartment in Croatiaâ€™s capital. But that year, civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering Anaâ€™s idyllic childhood. Daily life is altered by food rations and air raid drills, and soccer matches are replaced by sniper fire. Neighbors grow suspicious of one another, and Anaâ€™s sense of safety starts to fray. When the war arrives at her doorstep, Ana must find her way in a dangerous world.
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New York, 2001. Ana is now a college student in Manhattan. Though sheâ€™s tried to move on from her past, she canâ€™t escape her memories of warâ€”secrets she keeps even from those closest to her. Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, Ana returns to Croatia after a decade away, hoping to make peace with the place she once called home. As she faces her ghosts, she must come to terms with her countryâ€™s difficult history and the events that interrupted her childhood years before.
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Moving back and forth through time, Girl at War is an honest, generous, brilliantly written novel that illuminates how history shapes the individual. Sara NoviÄ‡ fearlessly shows the impact of war on one young girlâ€”and its legacy on all of us. Itâ€™s a debut by a writer who has stared into recent history to find a story that continues to resonate today.
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Praise for Girl at War
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â€œOutstanding . . . Girl at War performs the miracle of making the stories of broken lives in a distant country feel as large and universal as myth.â€â€”The New York Times Book Review (Editorâ€™s Choice)
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â€œIf we looked for and celebrated a â€˜book of the summerâ€™ as we do that one song every year (what will it be this year?!), this novel would surely be this summerâ€™s star.â€â€”Vanity Fair
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â€œA shattering debut . . . The book begins with what deserves to become one of contemporary literatureâ€™s more memorable opening lines. The sentences that follow are equally as lyrical as a folk lament and as taut as metal wire wrapped through an electrified fence.â€â€”USA Today

â€œIntimate and immense . . . [NoviÄ‡ is] a writer whose own gravity and talent anchor this novel.â€â€”The New York Times

â€œ[A]Â gripping debut novel . . . NoviÄ‡, in tender and eloquent prose, explores the challenge of how to live even after one has survived.â€â€”O: The Oprah Magazine

â€œPowerful and vividly wrought . . . NoviÄ‡ writes about horrors with an elegant understatement. In cool, accomplished sentences, we are met with the gravity, brutality and even the mundaneness of war and loss as well as the enduring capacity to live.â€â€”San Francisco Chronicle

â€œAstonishing . . . an extraordinarily poised and potent debut novel, a story about grief and exile, memory and identity, and the redemptive power of love.â€â€”Financial Times

â€œAn unforgettable portrait of how war forever changes the life of the individualÂ . . . a remarkable debut by a writer working with deep reserves of talent, heart, and mind.â€â€”Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story
Country USA
Manufacturer Random House
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2015-05-12
UnitCount 1
Format Deckle Edge
EANs 9780812996340

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Random House
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2015-05-12
UnitCount	1
Format	Deckle Edge
EANs	9780812996340

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