Publisher's Weekly Review
With this frenetic debut novel set during the Bosnian war, Prcic proves that it's impossible to outrun your past. The narrator, whose name is Ismet Prcic, recounts his childhood in Tuzla before the war and his adolescent interest in theater, which led him to a drama festival in Edinburgh, and his escape to America in 1995. But Prcic's tale is complicated and nonlinear; intercut with his youthful days in Bosnia spent avoiding Serbian mortar attacks are snippets of his rapidly deteriorating life in California, letters to his depressive mother back home, and, in a most intriguing twist, the story of another young Bosnian man, Mustafa Nalic. Instructed by his American psychiatrist to "write everything" (and take Xanax), Prcic at first seems to have invented Mustafa as a counterpart to his own life: Mustafa the soldier who remained in Bosnia. But as the fictional Prcic continues to deteriorate in the U.S., losing his girlfriend and his fragile grasp on reality, Mustafa morphs from fictional construct to flesh and blood until Prcic cannot separate his memories from what "Mustafa" imagined. Though the intricate structure proves challenging at times, Prcic captures the insanity of war and its unceasing aftermath. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
Reassembling the fragments of a life shattered by war is the task of the narrator of this challenging first novel set in 1995. The narrator, also named Ismet Prcic, is a young Bosnian who has escaped the bitter war in his home country and come to America after the theater troupe he is part of is given permission to perform in Scotland. Enrolled in college in Los Angeles and suffering from post-traumatic stress, he takes a writing class in which he is urged to get his experience down on paper as a way of processing it. What emerges is a memoir of growing up in Bosnia both before and during the war. Alongside this is the story of alter ego Mustafa, a young Bosnian soldier who experiences the full horror of the war. VERDICT Part coming-of-age tale and part war story, this novel contrasts sweetly innocent reminiscences of growing up in Tuzla with harrowing depictions of the costs of conflict, ultimately focusing on the psychological damage done to those in war's path. A memorable if disconcerting debut. [See Prepub Alert, 4/4/11.]-Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, North Andover, MA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
