For readers of The Tiger’s Wife and All the Light We Cannot See comes a powerful debut novel about a girl’s coming of age—and how her sense of family, friendship, love, and belonging is profoundly shaped by war. Zagreb, 1991. Ana Jurić is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a small apartment in Croatia’s capital. But that year, civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering … breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering Ana’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 Ana’s sense of safety starts to fray. When the war arrives at her doorstep, Ana must find her way in a dangerous world.
New York, 2001. Ana is now a college student in Manhattan. Though she’s tried to move on from her past, she can’t escape her memories of war—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 country’s difficult history and the events that interrupted her childhood years before.
Moving back and forth through time, Girl at War is an honest, generous, brilliantly written novel that illuminates how history shapes the individual. Sara Nović fearlessly shows the impact of war on one young girl—and its legacy on all of us. It’s a debut by a writer who has stared into recent history to find a story that continues to resonate today.
Advance praise for Girl at War
“[A] gripping debut novel . . . Nović, in tender and eloquent prose, explores the challenge of how to live even after one has survived.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“Nović’s important debut brings painfully home the jarring fact that what happens in today’s headlines on a daily basis—the atrocities of wars in Africa and the Mideast—is neither new nor even particularly the worst that humankind can commit. . . . . Thanks to Nović’s considerable skill, Ana’s return visit to her homeland and her past is nearly as cathartic for the reader as it is for Ana.”—Booklist (starred review)
“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, author of Super Sad True Love Story
“Intimate, crushingly brutal, and beautiful, 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
“With piercing clarity and devastating wit, Sara Nović traces the enduring fallout of a childhood interrupted by conflict. Girl at War is a 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
“Sentence after perfectly weighted sentence lands with the sound of a gavel. The first fifty pages might be the best fifty pages you read this year.”—Jonathan Dee, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Privileges
From the Hardcover edition.
more
This was a beautiful, stark book about a young girl growing up during the Yugoslavian civil wars in the early 90s, and later about her living in New York post-9/11. It was a striking novel made even more compelling by the fact that the author is deaf and writes with a deep focus on the visual components of loss, confusion, and a city at war. I have never before read a book where war is silent, where the things that cause the most terror are images and flashes of memory.
This is the story of Ana. Her life changed in 1991 when she was 10 years old and war broke out in Croatia. She was living in Zagreb at the time, with her parents and little sister. Her little sister was very sick, and due to the lack of health care, supplies, and food, Ana’s parents make the hard decision to send her little sister to the United States to get well. She is put with a foster family and Ana fears she may never see her again.
The book jumps forward to 2001 when Ana is now in the United States and a college student. After the war broke out, and tragedy struck her family, she was sent to the United States to be adopted by the same family who had her sister. She has tried to move on, but the things she saw and did after the war make it hard. She makes the decision she must go back to Croatia to find closure.
So she returns. She finds her closest friend and together they revisit the past and try to fill in the missing pieces that Ana has lived with for so long. She visits the last places she remembers before she was swept away and it brings back the ghost she had been hiding for so long.
This was a pretty good book. I listened to it as an audiobook, and I felt this one was much easier to follow than the last one I tried. I liked the pace of the book, and I think it flowed well. I do wish there would have been more said about the time the main character was a child soldier. Another critique I would have is the overuse of “colorful” language. Over describing things just for the sake it. But on the whole – it was a good story, and another one of those books that reminds me, as an American, about how lucky I truly am.
I would say pick up this book. Even though it is a work of fiction, it is based on the very real war in Croatia.
The setting is Croatia during the ethnic cleansing by the Serbian army. The story is told through the experiences of a young girl who experiences the creeping changes of her homeland as the war progressives. Suddenly, she is confronted with the senseless slaughter so common in this war. What does it take to recover and rebuild a life after senseless carnage? How do you reconcile what it takes to survive a war of this nature once in a new life? The story is very poignant and gives an important view from the eyes of a young survivor.
Being very familiar with Croatia and former Yugoslavia, I found this book to be very realistic and extremely interesting. The protagonist is a normal girl with whom everyone can relate, yet she has a very abnormal and haunting past. I am half-way through the book and I purchased it only a few hours ago. To say I cannot put it down is an understatement!
Since my father’s side of the family is from Croatia I am always curious to learn more about events and people from this area of the world. I confess to not knowing enough about the war there despite having visited twice so this was somewhat enlightening for me. I wished there had been more chapters to follow her discoveries when she returned.
This book made a “far-away” conflict real to me and taught me some things about geographical boundaries that I did not know.
This is a fictional account of what life was like for a child during the civil was in Yugoslavia. It relates the horror and the lasting effects on the ones who survived.
Well told story about what it would be like to actually live in a war zone with war all around.
It was well written and gripping and had the feel of authenticity,
Horribly depressing. Didn’t finish reading it.
Read like non-fiction. Uplifting story about the will to survive war at all costs.
Great novel about the brutality of war, and the lasting impacts on survivors. Haunting.
Excellent. Men should read it; reader forgets she’s female. (This is all we ask.)
This was a truly great book. I have been forever changed by reading it. The author did a tremendous job portraying what life is like for a child raised in the middle of war.
This book puts you right in the middle of the Serb-Croatian war. the main character, a young girl, learns about life, sacrifice , survival and the kindness and cruelty of strangers.
This novel gave me greater insight into the tragedy of civil war on the country’s inhabitants. Gripping and well written.