April Fool’s Day is about the life of Ivan Dolinar.

The book starts with Ivan’s childhood during Tito’s times. Although a childhood during a communist regime doesn’t seem to be a good setting for a comedy, the book is often very funny in the beginning even though the humor is mainly black. Novakovich is an amazing writer. He looks deep into things and he’s able to show them to you from an angle you wouldn’t have otherwise noticed. His writing is perfect. That’s why I continued reading the book even when it turned gruesome. There’s not much laughter allowed under a regime, and Ivan soon learns this for himself. Then Tito dies and the wars of ex-Yugoslavia start. Those wars were extremely scary. They were happening between neighbours, classmates, friends or even members of one family. The nature of what was going on then is conveyed really well in April Fool’s Day . That part of the book is also very well written but hard to read because of what it describes so I had to take often breaks.

The final part of the book is philosophic and even surreal although still written in the same style. The ending of the book is one of the most beautiful ones I’ve ever seen but I don’t use the word “beautiful” and “happy” interchangeably.

The events in the book are horrifying, the protagonist is often despicable, but the book is perfectly written. In my system of values the writing is the most important so if you can go through graphic scenes for the sake of reading good literature I would definitely recommend April Fool’s Day to you.

Genre: saga
Stars from Goodreads: 4.21
Stars from me: 4

The Walnut Mansion is for those who like sagas, histories of families where characters’ stories flow into one another, the characters themselves wither and disappear but the book goes on. You will keep the memories of those characters as if you had met them personally. Miljenko Jergović creates them with the same craft as Leo Tolstoy did. The people in their books are alive and breathing.

The actions take place on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia. I’ve been living on this territory for many years, but I managed to understand it better only now, after reading The Walnut Mansion. To be more precise, I managed to understand that I will never understand it completely. Yugoslavia was only one of the forms this land once took. It also used to be the Ottoman Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire. The book will take you through all those epochs, leading you along lives and story lines.

It is a highly satisfying read because of how beautifully it is written, but it’s not an easy one. It is a story of many wars, of a country reshaping itself, of very passionate people, and so it cannot be gentle.

Jergović managed to deliver the horrible without savoring it game-of-thrones way. There will be violence but it will be faded, almost emotionless. Which is, in fact, even scarier. Unfortunately, either following the modern fashion or just a personal style of his, Jergović couldn’t leave the book without several graphic descriptions of sex organs and bodily functions. That’s the only reason why prude me is giving the book one star less than perfect. I believe if a character can be developed without his sex organ scrutinized under a microscope, he should.

The Walnut Mansion was translated into very few languages. Anglophone readers are lucky. The translator Stephen M. Dickey seems to be a great fan of Jergović, so the translation is very good.

Books from other cultures are different from those you are used to. It’s an unforgettable experience to see how an author uses usual tools but creates something absolutely new. For many readers The Walnut Mansion will become this experience.

]]> 55 /2018/07/31/miss-ex-yugoslavia/ /2018/07/31/miss-ex-yugoslavia/#comments Tue, 31 Jul 2018 19:25:24 +0000 https://readerwitch.wordpress.com/?p=3 Genre: Memoir
Stars from Goodreads: 4.07
Stars from me: 5
Available on Amazon.

Read Miss Ex-Yugoslavia.

If there was only one phrase I could say about this book, that would be it – read it!

I loved the book so much I was ready to send the copies to everybody I knew. Unfortunately, most people I know either don’t read English, or don’t read at all. So I created this blog to say it to the world – read Miss Ex-Yugoslavia!

Read it, even if you have no idea about Yugoslavia, or any other socialist country, or what it feels like to be a bearer of two different cultures. In fact, read it exactly for this reason. The book will show you something new. And isn’t it the primary treasure of books, to let you experience what you otherwise would have never experienced?

Read it because it’s honest and clear, like anything that is true art. Miss Ex-Yugoslavia will teach you more about history, people and wars than all school books combined.

The book will make you laugh and cry, aloud and alone. And how often does this happen nowadays?

Finally, if you were born in a socialist country, if you know what it is like to acquire a new different culture, if you know what it feels like when different truths contradict each other and are still equally real, this book is definitely for you. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will reconnect with times and spaces that you considered long lost. This book will not just be an exciting read but a journey.

My heartfelt thanks to the author Sofija Stefanovic for this amazing experience!