For young Aleksandar - the best magician in the non-aligned states and painter of unfinished things - life is endowed with a mythic quality in the ...
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Oct 13, 2011
oriana
rated it: 
I finished this book ages ago, but alas I have not had time to do up a proper review. It was spectacular, though. More soon, I swear.
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Reasons why I already adore this book, even though I'm less than fifty pages in:
1. As I learned from bookfriend Brian, the other edition has a photo of a man on the cover, which it turns out (unbeknownst even to him) is Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snickett, a.k.a. my boyfriend.
2. The chapter titles are More...
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Jun 03, 2008
Colleen
rated it:
I LOVED THIS BOOK!!! Stanisic writes of his boyhood growing up in Bosnia before and during the war, but it's not your typical "war story," rather it's a heart-wrenching, hilarious account of an imaginative childhood that happens to include a war. For those who have ever visited Bosnia or are from there, the sites, sounds, and people will strike a true chord that will leave you longing to return. The Drina features solidly in the book as well and it is probably the best love story abo
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(4 people liked it)
Apr 04, 2008
christopher
rated it:
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius... A sharp narrative of the Bosnian war of the early nineties and what becomes of its survivors.
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(2 people liked it)
Dec 16, 2007
Dragana
rated it:
Tragically funny, poetic, quirky. Incredible talent.
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(2 people liked it)
Feb 06, 2011
Strange about this book: when I am reading it, I think it's gorgeous. It's about an interesting time, the war in the Balkans recently, and the young protagonist is funny and observant. I'm only on p. 118 or so but when I put it down, I don't long to go back to it. I'm not hungry for it but I admire it when I do read it. I suppose I'll finish it, I'm just not in a hurry.
The peas were simmering away on the thank-God-we-still-have-power. Less and less light was falling through the More...
The peas were simmering away on the thank-God-we-still-have-power. Less and less light was falling through the More...
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(1 person liked it)
Jun 23, 2008
Dylan
rated it:
The best contemporary novel that I've read. It tells the story of Aleksander Krsmanovic, a young Bosnian boy whose family is forced to emigrate to the town of Essen in Germany during the war. He relives his childhood, memories of his grandfather, the fall of Communism, his inability to cope with death and war. He searches desperately for Asija, a girl he met in a stairwell in a crowded building as Serbian soldiers looted and destroyed. He tells stories that he can't finish.
The book's word More...
The book's word More...
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Jun 09, 2009
Anna
rated it:
Let me over-generalize for a second and say there are two kinds of novels: the ones we read for the plot ("Gone With the Wind," say, or my beloved "Dragonlance" series) and the ones we read for the writing (Nicholson Baker's "The Mezzanine", where all that "happens" over 144 pages is that the narrator buys some shoelaces on his lunch hour). Bosnian-born Saša Stanišic;'s first novel, "How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone," which was short-listed
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(1 person liked it)
Sep 27, 2011
Meaghan
rated it: 
This is beautiful writing. Stanišić's great love for Yugoslavia shines and of course it makes me reflect sadly on what was lost. However, I think the narrative skipped around way too much. Sometimes I had a hard time figuring out what was going on. I liked the first half of the book much better than the second.
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Jun 03, 2008
Sarah
rated it:
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone deftly tells of the experiences of growing up and being caught up in a war. Comrade in Chief of the Unifinished, Aleksander lives a typical boy's life until his city of Visegard is thrust into war in the early 1990s. His story is one of humor and heartbreak as he desperately tries to remember everything from his former life, making lists and telling the stories of people from his city, places he frequented, and a girl that may or may not have existed and
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(1 person liked it)
Jul 09, 2009
Cat
rated it: 
This book deserves four-and-a-half stars. It was that good. Just really, really good. Aleksandar is the main character here, growing up in the years just prior to and then during the Yugoslav Wars which began in 1991. The story traces his formative years amidst warfare and includes arcs involving his friends, relatives, and neighbors. The second part of the book details how Aleksandar went about finding what had happened to the same characters we met in the first part.
I loved b More...
I loved b More...
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(1 person liked it)
Apr 19, 2010
Baklavahalva
rated it:
Read it in one day. I was suspicious at first of his success, and mostly wanted to see what the big deal was. The book will break your heart and make you laugh uproariously. This is a polyphonic work. Stanišić masterfully presents voices of several characters, but also several voices of his main character, Aleksandar, which come together at certain points: a child in love with the magic of imagination introduced to him by his grandpa; an adolescent trying to cope with war and exile; a twent
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Aug 09, 2009
Mazel
rated it:
Aleksandar grandit près de Viegrad, dans ce qui est encore la Yougoslavie, quand se produit un drame : la mort de son grand-père Slavko.
le serment de transformer la réalité en histoires, l'enfant espère jusqu'au bout le réveiller. Son grand-père adoré n'a-t-il pas fait de lui un magicien ? Mais il faudra que les pouvoirs d'Aleksandar soient grands car la guerre est proche.
Viendront le temps de l'exil et d'une intégration difficile dans l'Allemagne des années 1990, obséd More...
le serment de transformer la réalité en histoires, l'enfant espère jusqu'au bout le réveiller. Son grand-père adoré n'a-t-il pas fait de lui un magicien ? Mais il faudra que les pouvoirs d'Aleksandar soient grands car la guerre est proche.
Viendront le temps de l'exil et d'une intégration difficile dans l'Allemagne des années 1990, obséd More...
Aug 02, 2011
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Sasa Stanisic (Trans. by Anthea Bell, Grove Press, 2008)
How The Soldier Repairs the Gramophone has an unusual structure: it is divided into two parts, the first one with the same title as the novel, the second titled “When Everything Was All Right” and authored by Aleksandar Krsmanovic, the novel’s narrator (and, obviously, an alter ego of Sasa Stanisic). This is not a story within a story, but rather, two twin stories, as both tell the stor More...
How The Soldier Repairs the Gramophone has an unusual structure: it is divided into two parts, the first one with the same title as the novel, the second titled “When Everything Was All Right” and authored by Aleksandar Krsmanovic, the novel’s narrator (and, obviously, an alter ego of Sasa Stanisic). This is not a story within a story, but rather, two twin stories, as both tell the stor More...
Nov 28, 2008
Harry
rated it:
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Saša Stanišić is my book from Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Read The World challenge. I actually had a different writer in mind — Ivo Andrić, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961 — but when I saw this in the bookshop I switched. Mainly because most of the books I’ve been reading are a few decades old, and it’s nice to find one which is fresh out of the oven (published in German in 2006; the English translation by Anthea Bell in 2008).
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Mar 26, 2010
Mommalibrarian
rated it:
I chose historical fiction as a shelf for this book. I takes place in the former country of Yugoslavia. There are nice bits about being a boy growing up in a relatively unsophisticated town. There are awful bits, barely understood as seen through the eyes of a young boy. The story is quietly told. There is no ranting or raving or choosing side or condemnations. At one point he gets a letter from his cousin, also a young boy, Zoran, "I hate the bridge. I hate the shots in the night an
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Jul 22, 2011
Nick
rated it:
The real magic of this work is the writing. War aside, the author simply captures a child's perception of a tragic occurrence with poetic beauty. I've never experienced a voice that was this unique, perhaps even experimental, that didn't eventually become tiring on the reader. Here though, the beauty of the writing continually expands with the story. Reminds me of how a child's mind can often be more sensible than an adult's.
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Jul 10, 2009
Ms. S...........
rated it:
One vignette in the book relates the torturous wartime story of a rabbi who was tied to his Torah shrine and left on the ice to wait for spring. As he manages to get himself off of the thawing lake, with the ice cracking beneath his feet, he says "...everything else sank into the depths, I saved nothing, it was all gone: my name, my dignity, my breath for saying long sentences, my self-respect, my confidence, but as the priests gave me water, I knew one thing, I knew that the whole world is
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Jul 28, 2008
Robert
rated it:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
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Aug 04, 2011
Bianca
rated it:
Confusing book and very deep. To much of a literary person book for my liking (lots of symbolism etc). The story takes place during the war in Yugoslavia told through the eyes of Aleksander, a young child. I didn't know much about the history of Yugoslavia which is why I chose to read this book. I thought it would be interesting to learn something about it. I learned that it was a bloody and horrific war, though I suppose they all are, and the book made no bones about sharing violent details. If
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Jan 05, 2009
Sherie
rated it:
Anyone looking for a linear history of the dissolution of Yugoslavia should look elsewhere. This is a poignant, funny, alarming look at what happens when a child remembers troubled times. Stanisic protrays life, first from a child's POV and then in retrospect, as a young adult, trying to makes some sense of what has happened. It's almost like two stories inside the jacket. When his village is being bombed, all the adults whisper and he is left with questions like; Who will save us? and Who is
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May 10, 2008
Mark
rated it:
Strange and strangely moving. A beautiful book from a really talented Bosnian writer.
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(1 person liked it)
Dec 13, 2010
Polly
rated it:
Reading it I feel like plunging into a very special world. I love it!
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May 09, 2008
Andrew
rated it:
Nice one. Liked it better than the Hemon book.
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(1 person liked it)
Feb 17, 2011
Sandst
rated it: 
I started this book last November, read about 30 pages and stopped. I tried reading it again recently, restarted from the beginning, and it is still as difficult to read as it was the last time I tried, but I persevered on and finally managed to finish it. I could only read in small doses though, as my mind wanders off after 10 pages. The back cover states that this story is about a young boy named Aleksander and his story tellings during the Bosnian war, how he fled to Germany and 10 years late
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Mar 27, 2010
Cynthia
rated it:
Oh wow. Started this last night and it's unlike anything I have read. Early on, the main character, Aleksandar, loses his Grandfather Slavko.
(page 3)"The mourners bring chocolate and sugar cubes, cognac and schnapps. They want to console Granny with sweet things, they want to comfort themselves with drink. Male mourning smells of aftershave. It stands in small groups in the kitchen, getting drunk. Female mourning sits around the living room table with Granny,suggesting names fo More...
(page 3)"The mourners bring chocolate and sugar cubes, cognac and schnapps. They want to console Granny with sweet things, they want to comfort themselves with drink. Male mourning smells of aftershave. It stands in small groups in the kitchen, getting drunk. Female mourning sits around the living room table with Granny,suggesting names fo More...
Sep 24, 2008
Matthew
rated it:
A review I wrote for elsewhere--I don't really want to bother capsuling it:
“I want to make unfinished things,” says the young Aleksandar Krsmanovic in Sasa Stanisic’s How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (Grove Press, 345 pages, $24). He will paint “plums without stones, rivers without dams, Comrade Tito in a T-shirt!” But in Visegrad, Bosnia, in 1992, an unfinished thing is also a rifle without a sniper, a shooting without blood, or a Muslim girl without her rapist.
Th More...
“I want to make unfinished things,” says the young Aleksandar Krsmanovic in Sasa Stanisic’s How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (Grove Press, 345 pages, $24). He will paint “plums without stones, rivers without dams, Comrade Tito in a T-shirt!” But in Visegrad, Bosnia, in 1992, an unfinished thing is also a rifle without a sniper, a shooting without blood, or a Muslim girl without her rapist.
Th More...
Aug 17, 2008
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone By Sasa Stanisic Grove Press 345 pp., $24
Thomas Wolfe has nothing on Aleksandar Krsmanović. “You can’t go home again,” is much more than a saying once your town becomes the site of genocide, as Saša Stanišić details in his debut novel, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone.
As a boy, Aleksandar idolized his Grandpa Slavko, who made him a hat and wand, and told him that both were magic (and only to be used in accordance with the Statu More...
Thomas Wolfe has nothing on Aleksandar Krsmanović. “You can’t go home again,” is much more than a saying once your town becomes the site of genocide, as Saša Stanišić details in his debut novel, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone.
As a boy, Aleksandar idolized his Grandpa Slavko, who made him a hat and wand, and told him that both were magic (and only to be used in accordance with the Statu More...
Aug 09, 2008
Amber
rated it:
I picked up this novel after attempting (and then giving up on) a couple of others that I felt I was wasting my time on. I wanted to read a valuable book...and then I found this one.
This starts out happy. And then it gets a little bleak. And then it comes together in a manic fit of emotion.
This is Aleksandar's documented memory and it provides so much insight to his shattered world. At times, we are as disillusioned as he is-but then he enlightens us with his deft story More...
This starts out happy. And then it gets a little bleak. And then it comes together in a manic fit of emotion.
This is Aleksandar's documented memory and it provides so much insight to his shattered world. At times, we are as disillusioned as he is-but then he enlightens us with his deft story More...
Apr 23, 2009
Milan/zzz
rated it:
This is an outstanding novel! I’ve read it actually twice during last year, first as ARC which I was aiming to keep in my permanent collection but then I received definitive copy which is staying (actually it’s already taken from me) in PC. So I’ve read both, ARC and definitive book and they are the same
This book reminded me on my childhood during old Yugoslavia, there are so many familiar things, phrases, the way of thinking, positive-ness, food (OMG food!), humour... Oh and ideolo More...
This book reminded me on my childhood during old Yugoslavia, there are so many familiar things, phrases, the way of thinking, positive-ness, food (OMG food!), humour... Oh and ideolo More...
