For readers ofย The Tigerโs Wifeย andย All the Light We Cannot Seeย comes a powerful debut novel about a girlโs coming of ageโand how her sense of family, friendship, love, and belonging is profoundly shaped by war.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYย BOOKPAGE,ย BOOKLIST,ย AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE โข ALEX AWARD WINNER โข LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST โขย LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMENโS PRIZE FOR FICTION
Zagreb, 1991. Ana Juriฤ is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a small apartment in Croatiaโs capital. But that year, civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering Anaโs idyllic childhood. Daily life is altered by food rations and air raid drills, and soccer matches are replaced by sniper fire. Neighbors grow suspicious of one another, and Anaโs sense of safety starts to fray. When the war arrives at her doorstep, Ana must find her way in a dangerous world.
New York, 2001. Ana is now a college student in Manhattan. Though sheโs tried to move on from her past, she canโt escape her memories of warโsecrets she keeps even from those closest to her. Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, Ana returns to Croatia after a decade away, hoping to make peace with the place she once called home. As she faces her ghosts, she must come to terms with her countryโs difficult history and the events that interrupted her childhood years before.
Moving back and forth through time, Girl at War is an honest, generous, brilliantly written novel that illuminates how history shapes the individual. Sara Noviฤ fearlessly shows the impact of war on one young girlโand its legacy on all of us. Itโs a debut by a writer who has stared into recent history to find a story that continues to resonate today.
Praise for Girl at War
โOutstanding . . . Girl at War performs the miracle of making the stories of broken lives in a distant country feel as large and universal as myth.โโThe New York Times Book Review (Editorโs Choice)
โ[An] old-fashioned page-turner that will demand all of the readerโs attention, happily given. A debut novel that astonishes.โโVanity Fair
โShattering . . . The book begins with what deserves to become one of contemporary literatureโs more memorable opening lines. The sentences that follow are equally as lyrical as a folk lament and as taut as metal wire wrapped through an electrified fence.โโUSA Today