Shards by Ismet Prcic
Ismet Prcic's brilliant, provocative, and propulsively energetic debut is about a young Bosnian, also named Ismet Prcic, who has fled his war-torn homeland and is now struggling to reconcile his past with his present life in California. He is advised that in order to make peace with the corrosive guilt he harbors over leaving behind his family behind, he must write everything. The result is a great rattlebag of memories, confessions, and fictions: sweetly humorous recollections of Ismet's childhood in Tuzla appear alongside anguished letters to his mother about the challenges of life in this new world. As Ismet's foothold in the present falls away, his writings are further complicated by stories from the point of view of another young man--real or imagined--named Mustafa, who joined a troop of elite soldiers and stayed in Bosnia to fight. When Mustafa's story begins to overshadow Ismet's new-world identity, the reader is charged with piecing together the fragments of a life that has become eerily unrecognizable, even to the one living it. Shards is a thrilling read--a harrowing war story, a stunningly inventive coming of age, and a heartbreaking saga of a splintered family.Ismet Prcic is a writer of fiction and essays and has published various works in magazines such as Bat City Review, Faultline, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and Prague Literary Review. He is the author of California Dream and Scherben. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780802170811 |
| ISBN 10 | 0802170811 |
| Title | Shards |
| Author | Ismet Prcic |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press |
| Year published | 2011-10-04 |
| Number of pages | 400 |
| Prizes | Winner of Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award (Regional Book) 2012, Winner of L.A. Times Book Prize (First Fiction) 2011, Winner of Oregon Book Awards (Fiction) 2013, Commended for Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize 2011 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |