Heritage of Smoke - Softcover

Novakovich, Josip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 194108866X ISBN 13: 9781941088661

Publisher: Dzanc Books, 2017

Synopsis

Short story writer, novelist and essayist Josip Novakovich returns with his first collection of stories since being named a finalist for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize. In Heritage of Smoke, he explores the themes of war and exile, of religiosity and existentialism, that have defined his fiction and earned him a place among most admired international writers addressing contemporary literature's most pressing questions. Masterpieces such "When the Saints Come", "White Mustache", and "Acorns", unflinching in their humanity and realism, take us into the recent Balkan wars and their aftermath. In between, dry humor and world-weary wisdom infuse such exile preoccupations as soccer, terrorism, and cigarettes. Taken together, this latest collection comprises a bravely intelligent mosaic of what it means to be torn from one's country and to reinvent oneself. 

About this title

About the Author

Josip Novakovich, a Croatian-American writer, has published 12 books of fiction and nonfiction. His work has been translated into twenty languages, including Japanese, Turkish, and Russian. He has published nearly two hundred short stories, poems, and essays in American and international journals and anthologies. He's won a Whiting, an American Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Fulbright Fellowship at St. Petersburg State University in Russia. He teaches English at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

Review

KIRKUS REVIEWA host of characters grapple with the legacy of war, religious obsessions, surreal instances of violence, and an enduring guilt in this collection by a writer who was born in Yugoslavia and now lives in Canada.
Novakovich's (Shopping for a Better Country, 2012, etc.) new collection abounds with stories of displacement. Characters leave the countries in which they were born to seek their fortunes elsewhere; religious pilgrims suffer misadventures as they grapple with their own mortality; and people find themselves taking on the personality traits of those they encounter under bizarre circumstances. The aftermath of war--whether those that took place in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s or the second world war decades earlier--leaves a heavy mark on many, which sometimes manifests as realistic depictions of trauma and grief and sometimes ventures into the surreal and mystical. In "Dutch Treat," a former U.N. peacekeeper encounters the survivor of a massacre in Srebrenica years later in New York. The two engage in a wary back-and-forth, as the former peacekeeper is both overcome by guilt and begins to take on qualities of the other man's paranoia. That kind of strange obsessiveness lends many of these stories a welcome unpredictability, whether Novakovich is writing about a grieving family or a soccer hooligan who seeks to make amends for his role in a horrific act of revenge. And some of the observations made throughout the book are wonderfully succinct. In one story of an interpreter caught up in war, for example, Novakovich summarizes the protagonist's predicament neatly: "It seemed incongruous to Ana that these men would have childhood memories." In a different story, another character offers a more humanistic take on things, saying, "All we are is soul." The stories told here span the gulf between the two statements.
These often haunting stories of violence, faith, and disconnection make for a memorable voyage into a number of unsettled minds.

Publishers WeeklyThe characters in Novakovich's excellent stories tend to be in extremis: people in the midst of war, or refugees escaping it, or veterans trying to forget it. His muscular prose and remarkable sense of place and history (both recent and somewhat distant) make for thrilling reading. What's more surprising and impressive is the breadth of territory covered here. One story is set in Hungary in the 1950s; another follows a Dutchman named Martin Neeskens who worked for the U.N. during the Bosnian conflicts in the 1990s but now lives in New York. Another, set on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, involves a clutch of international roommates, including two Russian émigrés, crammed into an apartment. Themes overlap, but each story presents its own unique world. In the title story, Jovan, a refugee from Croatia now living in Belgrade, reconnects with an old friend named Danko. The very act of mentally reopening that door is complex--painful and confusing and grotesquely humorous, but above all inescapable. "Smoke is the flavor of our memories," Jovan says. Novakovich's evocative stories leave echoes after reading. (Jan.)

About this edition

• Publisher: Dzanc Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 194108866X
• ISBN 13: 9781941088661
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256