Shards: A Novel
A fragmented autobiographical novel that traces memory, war, and the afterlife of displacement in Bosnia.
Work Information
A life reassembled from the broken pieces left behind by war.
Ismet Prcic’s debut novel braids war memory, theater, and life in America into a portrait of a fractured self.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Grove Press, Black Cat
- Published
- 2011-10-04
- Pages
- 400 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.7 x 3.18 x 20.32 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780802170811
- ISBN-10
- 0802170811
- Price
- 3601 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Coming of Age
Ismet Prcic’s brilliant, provocative, and propulsively energetic debut is about a young Bosnian, also named Ismet Prcic, who has fled his war-torn homeland and is now struggling to reconcile his past with his present life in California. He is advised that in order to make peace with the corrosive guilt he harbors over leaving behind his family behind, he must write everything.” The result is a great rattlebag of memories, confessions, and fictions: sweetly humorous recollections of Ismet’s childhood in Tuzla appear alongside anguished letters to his mother about the challenges of life in this new world. As Ismet’s foothold in the present falls away, his writings are further complicated by stories from the point of view of another young manreal or imaginednamed Mustafa, who joined a troop of elite soldiers and stayed in Bosnia to fight. When Mustafa’s story begins to overshadow Ismet’s new-world identity, the reader is charged with piecing together the fragments of a life that has become eerily unrecognizable, even to the one living it. Shards is a thrilling reada harrowing war story, a stunningly inventive coming of age, and a heartbreaking saga of a splintered family.
Reviews
-
I purchased this book for one of my college courses and it is phenomenal. I had the opportunity to meet Ismet Prcic and it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. He's a very charismatic and fun person; his charisma is evident throughout his work. He weaves a brilliant story, one the reader can get lost in. It starts off a little slow, and perhaps his style is an acquired taste, but it is in my Top 5 favorite novels because it is absolutely brilliant. I highly HIGHLY recommend this novel to everyone that I know. I can't wait to read his next novel (if he ever decides to finish and publish it, anyway...).
-
Ich hatte gehofft etwas über die Auseinandersetzung der Kulturen, den schwelenden Konflikt und den daraus resultierenden Krieg zu lernen. Allerdings ist das Buch eine Biografie mit einer sehr persönlichen Sichtweise. Der Autor erzählt seine Geschichte und die erzählt er unterhaltsam. That's it. - Daher: Nett -
-
A great mixture of the novel and memoir forms. A young Bosnian called Ismet Prcic leaves his war torn country to live in California where a doctor advises him to write everything down to help him cope with his problems settling down there - this is the memoir part. The novel focuses on his life growing up in Bosnia, family problems and the eventual family breakup. It is also a really heartbreaking study of the horrors of war and the resulting shell shock. It also deals with his involvement in a drama group in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina where the author is from and how they get permission to visit a drama group in Scotland where some of the troup plan to escape. Ismet ends back in Croatia before eventually getting to California. Although it jumps back and forth in time and confuses by Ismet apparently morphing into Mustafa (His name is Meat in the Apache unit of the army) the book is brilliantly written and really entertaining.
-
SHARDS has received numerous awards this year, including best first novel from The American Academy of Arts and Letters. This is one of the most remarkable novels I have ever read. Don't be intimidated by the fragmentary aspects of the novel, because when the topic is war, murder and hatred, perhaps the only way to explore these terrible themes is by breaking the story literally into shards. A remarkable literary debut.
-
Delicious: voice and wit, use of language. Nutritious: Solid underpinnings, an important story told with depth and breadth of insight. Engaging all the way through. Needs some judicious minor editing to avoid losing momentum in the middle, always a problem with real life--even managed in fiction--because life is comprised of both rapids and eddies. I look forward to more, more, more....Kudos to Ismet!