April Fool's Day - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0715633988 ISBN 13: 9780715633984

Publisher: Gardners Books

Synopsis

A Balkan Everyman's progress through the later 20th century and the afterlife. April Fool's Day follows the story of Ivan Dolinar, a man caught in the cross-currents of senseless wars, ridiculous dictators, and the usual-and unusual-difficulties of just trying to get by in the Balkans. Ivan's life begins, auspiciously, on April Fool's Day, 1948. As a boy growing up in a small town in Croatia, Ivan tries to love the people's dictator, Tito, but his love is not returned. In a world of propaganda and paranoia, young Ivan quickly discovers that the best of intentions can backfire. At 19, full of hope and ambition, he enters medical school in Novi Sad, in Serbia, but his medical career is cut short by a prank and he is sent to a labour camp to dig rocks for two years. After his release, Ivan takes up philosophy, but when war breaks out, he is drafted-into the wrong army. A pawn in a brutal conflict, in which rules and loyalties shift unexpectedly, Ivan is wounded badly, but survives against all odds. Thinking to try the quiet life of family and home after the war, Ivan returns to his hometown. However, once again, his best intentions go awry. Fate has other plans for Ivan. From the tavern to the ivory tower to the bloody battlefields, as Ivan's fortunes rise and fall faster than you can say Yugoslavia, a tender novel emerges. At once dark and absurdly comic, a brilliant mixture of wit and humanity, April Fool's Day delivers a deeply affecting view of the human condition.

About this title

About the Author

Josip Novakovich's stories have appeared in The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Double Take, Tin House, and Ploughshares, among other periodicals. The receiver of numerous awards, Josip Novakovich was named one of the best story writers of the decade by Kirkus Reviews, and Utne Reader included him on the list of ten writers who are changing the way we look at the world.

From Publishers Weekly

Like Aleksandar Hemon and Ha Jin, short story writer Novakovich (Salvation and Other Disasters) manages the feat of writing vibrantly and inventively in a second language, shaping English to the dictates of his satiric, folk-tinged storytelling. His debut novel tells the story of Ivan Dolinar, a Croatian Everyman born in the town of Nizograd in 1948. As a boy, Ivan is a bully and a patriot (as one chapter title puts it, "Ivan loves the state apparatus"), and he grows up longing to serve his country. After a buffoonish but successful stint in medical school, he's about to become a doctor when a foolish joke gets him arrested and sent to a labor camp on a desolate Adriatic island. He's released three years later, but his criminal record makes him unfit for everything except graduate school in philosophy. Demoralized and hapless, he's drafted into the Serb-heavy Yugoslav army to fight his fellow Croats; he soon deserts and is hustled into uniform on the other side. Novakovich gives a pithy, biting account of the Balkan wars, following it up by an even more caustic account of Ivan's marriage to a woman he raped during the war. The story culminates with Ivan's first-person account of his own death and afterlife. Novakovich's English is foreign-tinged and brash, giving a jolt of chaotic energy to this dark Balkan comedy.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Gardners Books
• ISBN 10: 0715633988
• ISBN 13: 9780715633984
• Binding: Hardcover