Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A cross between Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated and A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - a fresh, poignant and very funny novel about a young child caught up in the Bosnian conflict

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

His grandfather taught Aleksandar that imagination trumps everything, a lesson he relies on when sectarian violence wracks his hometown in Bosnia-Herzegovina. When Staniic was 14, his family fled Bosnia-Herzegovina for Germany, where this book won the Readers' Prize and was shortlisted for the Deutscher Buchpreis. Foreign sales to 22 countries; reading group guide. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

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) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved