How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone [Hardcover]

Sasa Stanisic (Author), Anthea Bell (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 10, 2008

For young Aleksandar Krsmanoviæ, his grandfather Slavko’s credo--“the most valuable gift of all is invention, imagination is your greatest wealth”--endows life in Višegrad, Bosnia-Herzegovina with a mythic quality, a kaleidoscopic brilliance. So when his grandfather dies suddenly, Aleks summons this gift of storytelling to see him through his grief. It is a gift he will have to call on again when soldiers transform Višegrad--a town previously unconscious of racial and religious divides--into a nightmarish landscape of terror and violence. Though Aleks and his family flee to Germany, he is haunted by his past, and especially by Asija, the mysterious girl he tried to save. Desperate to learn of her fate, he sends manic, anguished letters out into the abyss, again turning to language to conjure all that he’s had to forfeit--his homeland, his mother tongue, his innocence. Beneath the infectious vibrancy of Stanišiæ’s voice is a sweetness and pathos that will haunt the reader long after the book ends. Powerful, vivid, funny, and devastating, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone captures the catastrophe of war through a child’s eyes and shows how words have the ability to mend what is broken and resurrect what is lost.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Stanisic's debut novel is the moving story of a young Bosnian refugee named Aleksandar Krsmanovic. Aleksandar is the apple of his family's eye, but his sheltered childhood ends when ethnic wars brewing in the surrounding republics make their way to his hometown in the spring of 1992. As Serbian troops storm the village, Aleksandar's family hides, but nowhere is safe. The violence forces the family to Germany, where they struggle to adjust to their new lives as refugees. In the depths of their despair, Aleksandar's grandmother makes him promise to "remember when everything was all right and the time when nothing's all right." Aleksandar keeps his word, and the memories pour out of him like a river. The author organizes Aleksandar's recollections as a stream of consciousness, operating on no distinct linear time line and often stopping one story and starting another in the same breath. It is difficult to keep up with this frantic pace, but it pays to be patient because a remarkable life's journey unfolds. (June)
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Review

"A brilliant debut novel from a young Bosnian writer . . . Stanisic's story is loaded on each page with galvanizing details, desperately making an inventory of an imperiled world. He maintains a delirious, jump-cut pace as words flash dark-to-light-to-dark, and sentences coil and snap, conjuring a macabre carnival atmosphere. . . . This crazy-quilt novel, a sensation in Europe, is a bold, questing work of art deeply rooted in the complex history of a blood-soaked, bone-planted land. . . . Stanisic is an exceptionally talented, impish and caring writer who has walked the edge of the abyss. One hopes that he will continue to grapple with the paradoxes intrinsic to the human condition and tell many more empathic, revealing and imaginative stories full of cathartic laughter and feeling." -- Donna Seaman, The Los Angeles Times

"Beyond succeeding as a compelling fictional account of the very real tragedy of a town in Bosnia-Herzegovina, [How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone] is also testament to the power of the imagination--and its limitations. . . . Stanisic's tale will remain exceptional: A gifted storyteller, he's able to translate unspeakably gruesome history into something poignant and hauntingly beautiful." -- Sidra Durst, The Village Voice

"In Sasa Stanisic's bittersweet, musical novel about a boy growing up in Bosnia-Herzogovina before and during the war, many things happen that are impossible to understand, startlingly visual, bordering on the surreal but all too real. . . . This is a funny, heartbreaking, beautifully written novel." -- Mary Brennan, The Seattle Times

"In his tale of childhood and war, Stanisic populates the river Drina with a dying grandfather, ghostly voices, a glasses-wearing catfish, discarded cabinets, and mutilated corpses. [His] story never calms, it rages, rough and broad and joyful. It contains both brutal heartbreak and whimsical delight. In short, it's great art. . . . Stanisic's prose is wildly inventive, never satisfied with too straightforward or familiar a telling . . . [and] so carefully crafted, so full of thrilling associative leaps and spinning breathlessness, that the author achieves poetry. . . . We live, we survive, we heal, the author wants us to see, by telling stories. This is a writer to watch." -- Jesse Nathan, San Francisco Chronicle

"Stanisic's debut novel How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone will convert skeptics with the sheer force of its emotional power. . . . Stanisic's perfectly chosen observations refract and amplify the horrifying, maddening surroundings, heightening both ends of the emotional spectrum, creating a story that, like war itself, is too large and chaotic to ever leave simply." -- Karla Starr, The Oregonian

"Stanisic's talent blazes off page after page. . . . That his tale contains so much natural, laugh-out-loud comedy speaks volumes for the author, whose autobiographical hero, Aleksandar, `somewhere between eight and fourteen,' is a talkative, precocious delight, determinedly optimistic in the face of heartbreaking losses, forever making startling little observations on life that somehow get it all wrong and yet sort of right. . . . Stanisic is so prodigiously full of big, open-hearted wisdom, I shudder to think what he has lived through to produce, at such an early age, such a transcendent little masterwork." -- Nick DiMartino, Shelf-Awareness

"Wildly imaginative storytelling . . . Through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Aleksandar Krsmonovic, we witness a massacre perpetrated by Bosnian Serbs against their Muslim neighbors in the town of Visegrad in 1992. . . . Madcap flights of invention and comic exaggeration clash movingly with the painfully real chronicle of terror, loss, and exile at the story's heart. . . . Far from trivializing the terrible history, the fanciful style makes it all the more acute. . . . How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone bears witness to this horror with tragicomic intensity, reflecting the possibilities and limitations of fiction in the face of atrocity." -- Ross Benjamin, Bookforum

"Even with hindsight, the Clinton-era conflict in the Balkans remains a confusing mess of clashing ethnic, national, and religious identities. A handful of compelling stories about this period have been bubbling to the surface . . . [and] How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone stands out as one of the best. . . . A challenging and haunted work." -- Drew Toal, Time Out New York

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; First Edition edition (June 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802118666
• ISBN-13: 978-0802118660
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #349,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars awe, May 31, 2008

By 

Arienette Cervantes - See all my reviews

This review is from: How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (Hardcover)

I picked up this novel after attempting (and then giving up on) a couple of others that I felt I was wasting my time on. I wanted to read a valuable book...and then I found one.

This starts out happy. And then it gets a little bleak. And then it comes together in a manic fit of emotion.

This is Aleksandar's documented memory and it provides so much insight to his shattered world. At times, we are as disillusioned as he is-but then he enlightens us with his deft storytelling... His sporadic thoughts...

"If I were a magician who could make things possible, I'd have lemonade always tasting as it did on the evening Francesco explained how right it was for the Italian moon to be a feminine moon. If I were a magician who could make things possible, we'd be able to understand all languages every evening between eight and nine. If I were a magician who could make things possible, all dams would keep their promises. If I were a magician who could make things possible, we'd be really brave."

Sasa Stanisic is a truly innovative author. This was spectacular.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a firecracker!, June 22, 2008

By 

Dragana Djordjevic-Laky - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (Hardcover)

Whether the term "migrant literature" is justified in its existence is a question that is, hm, existential. Sasa Stanisic may not think it is, but whatever the theoretical basis, DO READ this book, please! Even if you think you've read about all the semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tales sparkling with magic realism, pop-culture, wayward tragicomedy and lyrical interludes you can take, read it. In the author's adopted home country of Germany, it's a much publicized fact that he came as a refugee from Visegrad, Bosnia-Hercegovina (engraved in literature by 1961 Nobel Prize Winner Ivo Andric) at age 14 without speaking a word of German but started publishing to great success years ago and pulled off this poetic, inventive masterpiece when he was all of twice that age.

Anthea Bell's translation is certainly competent, though occasionally she doesn't quite hit the offbeat tone. But, in fairness, that's tough to do. Even in the original there are chapters where it takes pages to grasp what's going on, and I strongly hope that readers will apply some patience where necessary, because it will be rewarded. The most poignant example is the tour-de-force chapter (too long to quote) between pages 256 and 276 about a soccer game between warring factions turned bloody, which is based on a true event.

So why should American readers care about mental pole vaults on a part of the world with rituals, wars and sports they may not understand? Because the book makes a mark. Clever? For sure. Think Jonathan Safran Foer getting drunk with Gary Shteyngart, and I said this before I saw that the latter threw in his praise on the back flap. Biased reviewer? Maybe, though only to the extent that I hold writers whose vita bears any resemblance to mine to a higher standard. But find out for yourself.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my fav reads of the year, August 28, 2008

By 

ash (Phoenix) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (Hardcover)

I well remember the frustration I felt when I would sit and listen to the news about the war in Bosnia, about the snipers, the mass killings, the ethnic cleansing (I hate that term), and the destruction of the beautiful city of Sarajevo. I was hoping, young that I was, that the world would set this all straight. Boy was that bubble burst in an instant.

This book brings all of that back. With a staccato almost like a machine gun, he lets the memories of the war, and the time before, shoot the reader. Its a heartbreaking book about a heartbreaking war, but it could be about any war, any time, anywhere.

Caveat - his writing style is not for everyone. Some people may find the twists, turns and cloverleafs a bit daunting. There were times I had to put it down and read something else for a bit to get my balance. Others might be put off by the stream of consciousness. My suggestion to you is to just read and not worry about the style. I know for me, despite some confusion here and there, the time spend was well worth it!