A Handful of Sand by Marinko Koscec

A Handful of Sand by Marinko Koscec

'A Handful of Sand' is a love story and an ode to lost opportunity. Written as a duet for two narrators, we hear both the male and female voice trying to tell us their tale. Steeped in the social context of contemporary Croatia, its themes are vast: parenthood, loneliness, unhappy love, the absence of faith, the struggle for life.

"It combines travelogue, personal reflection and anecdote in a style that brings Peter Handke's work to mindRelationships, friendships, depression, sex, the nightlife of Zagreb and travels to the West combine in a graceful Bildungsroman set in the wake of the Yugoslav Wars - .a rich canvas." Josip Novakovich, Times Literary Supplement, July 12, 2013 "Marinko Koscec Has a dark wit as well a couple of times I even laughed out loud during this book .This book shows how precious and fragile love is between two people in Modern Croatia ,but this story is also a story every one can associate with even outside Croatia" Stu Allen, Winstonsdad's Blog "There are comic moments in this novel. The mocking description of the publishing industry he works for is an amusing satire, and The Holiday From Hell is full of black humour. There's a droll scene where he has to abandon his car to pursue her on the tram and comes back to find it impounded" Lisa Hill, ANZlitlovers "...like all that is shadow, it is revealed by light - meaning that there is humour in this book - it is brittle, sharp and it's nature dark, but it's there and at times will raise more than a smile to your face." The Parrish Lantern "A novel that I thoroughly enjoyed simply because of the existentialist musings and wonderful depictions of minutiae in our everyday lives. One that's well worth hunting down..." Messenger's Booker (and more) "There's a lot of good writing in A Handful of Sand, and there is also some very funny, dark humour in parts." Tony Malone, Tony's Reading List "By encouraging this sort of reading, by making the reader try to piece together what's happening, Koscec enacts one of the novel's central themes: in the face of chaos the desire for stable meaning compels us to become bricoleurs, taking whatever we can scrap from the garbage heap of history to assemble something - anything - that can hold meaning for us: a self-defining narrative, a work of art, a family, a religion, a country. " Tim Ellison - Review, Necessary Fiction

Marinko Koscec is a Croatian author and professor of French literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. He is also an editor at the SysPrint Publishing House and teaches novel writing at the Sarasan creative writing centre. He is the author of five novels: Someone Else (2001) was awarded the Mesa Selimovic prize for the best novel published in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, and A Handful of Sand was nominated for the prestigious Jutarnji List award.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781908236074
ISBN 10	1908236078
Title	A Handful of Sand
Author	Marinko Koscec
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Istros Books
Year published	2013-01-20
Number of pages	220
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.