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20th out of 115 books
—
41 voters
The Sojourn
The Sojourn, finalist for the National Book Award and winner of both the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and inaugural Chautauqua Prize, is the story of Jozef Vinich, who was uprooted from a 19th-century mining town in Colorado by a family tragedy and returns with his father to an impoverished shepherd’s life in rural Austria-Hungary. When World War One comes, Jozef joins his...more
Paperback, 192 pages
Published
April 19th 2011
by Bellevue Literary Press
(first published March 31st 2011)
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When I looked back over my 2011 reading year, I found there were just too many times when I finished a book I wasn't enjoying simply because I'd gone so far into it that I figured I may as well push on to the end. For 2012 I've decided to change that. So, sorry to say, The Sojourn is the first victim of my new policy.
I read a little over half of the book. Were I to finish, I'd probably give it three stars. Andrew Krivak writes well and the plot has potential. But the more I read, the flatter it...more
I read a little over half of the book. Were I to finish, I'd probably give it three stars. Andrew Krivak writes well and the plot has potential. But the more I read, the flatter it...more
I'm not going to give much detail about this book, because I want readers to discover what it is for themselves. But briefly, it's the story of a young man's sojourn into the world before, during, and following World War I. That sounds innocuous, but it is so much more. There is love, loyalty, bravery, danger, spirits....and the book is less than 200 pages, so it packs a wallop! And, my family to this country from the Austria/Czechoslovakia region, so it was near and dear to my heart.
For a firs...more
For a firs...more
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This novel, which tells the tale of a young Czech who becomes a sharpshooter for the Astro-Hungarian Empire during the First World War is a wonderfully told tale. The writing style is similar to what you would find in a Hemingway or a Cormac McCarthy. The writing is sparse, but the story it tells is powerful. I don't really want to give away any details, other then to say that this is a fantastic book.
This beautifully written novel is the story of several different kinds of journey experienced by Jozef Vinich, an WW I Austro-Hungarian sharpshooter. Born in the US, and returned to Hungary by his father (Vinich's mother died when he was a infant, Jozef grows up in pretty dismal conditions, but with a tight bond with his father, who finds work as a shepherd. A cousin comes to live with them, and becomes like a brother to Jozef. Then Jozef and the cousin, Zlee, leave for war. TO the physical jour...more
The eastern European migrations to work in the mines in Pueblo, Colorado, took place in the late 1890s. This story begins in 1899 when Anna Vinich, a Slovak immigrant, takes her baby son, Jozef, and her nephew for a walk along the rail lines. Anna and the nephew are killed by an oncoming train as baby Jozef is saved, tossed to some boys, playing in water below the trestle. The sister-in-law, learning of her son's death, goes into labor prematurely, delivering a stillborn girl.
This tragedy begins...more
This tragedy begins...more
Wellllll, I just don't get it. Here's a book that finally gets the Chautauqua Prize(not handed out very often) and I was sooo excited to get started I could hardly get the old Kindle Fire turned on fast enough. They have terrific books on their reading list every year so this must be an extraordinary one!
Beats me why they picked this one when there are so many other marvelous books on their lists year after year though. I guess I'll find out when I attend the lectures there this summer! Yes, it...more
Beats me why they picked this one when there are so many other marvelous books on their lists year after year though. I guess I'll find out when I attend the lectures there this summer! Yes, it...more
I received this book as a gift and really wanted to like it. It became clear quickly that the connotation of sojourn for me was far more positive than this interpretation. The story wends its way from Colorado to Central Europe during the turn of the 20th century and into World War I. I enjoyed some of the more mundane descriptions of life in the mountains and relationships between father, sons and brothers. War is never inspirational to me - the failure of people to learn from such events and t...more
Narrated by Jozef Vinich we follow him through a life of hardship and sadness, love and death. Right from his birth in 1899 death touches Jozef as his father takes him from America to return home to a rural village in the Austria-Hungary Empire to be a shepherd. Later death is his companion as he becomes a sniper in World War I and later with his love of a young gypsy woman.
This somewhat short novel is both lyrical and stark in its writing. While this is the author’s first novel he has published...more
This somewhat short novel is both lyrical and stark in its writing. While this is the author’s first novel he has published...more
First, let me say my rating reflects my enjoyment of the book, not the quality of the writing, for the quality is exceptionally rich. It is, though, a searing look at war, which was for me disturbing and unpleasant. The story line is interesting and unique, somewhat based on the author's own family background. Told in the first person, the narrator was born in Colorado, but , after a tragic accident, was taken by his father back to their native Slovakia to be raised in the household of the class...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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Andrew Krivak's impressive debut novel is a coming-of-age story about young Jozef Vinich, whose family is forced to flee a Colorado mining town in the 1890s for its homeland of Austria-Hungary due to a series of tragic events. When World War I breaks out across Europe, Jozef joins the fight as a sharpshooter. The majority of the novel focuses on his experiences in the killing fields and trenches of the Great War. Along the way Jozef faces a desperate journey through the Italian Alps, epic duels...more
World War I was the deadliest conflict in Western history, but contemporary portrayals of war in literature and cinema primarily focus on examples of combat from the past fifty or sixty years. At a time when the Great War is receding into the annals of distant history, this elegiac and edifying novel has been released--a small, slim but powerful story of a young soldier, Josef Vinich, who hails from a disenfranchised and impoverished family in rural Austria-Hungary.
Josef was born in the rural mi...more
Josef was born in the rural mi...more
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The Sojourn is about war on every level. The personal wars that we wage against ourselves, the wars within a family, wars within a groups of men and war at the global level. And what keeps coming to me after reading this amazing little book is that all of these wars are based on necessity. Sometimes we need to go to war against ourselves so that we can be free of history and the weights that others have hung around our necks. Jozef literally caries his anger and aggression with him in the form o...more
Andrew Krivak's The Sojourn follows young Jozef Vinich through his life being born in America to a family of immigrants, growing up in the old country, fighting in World War I, and coming back home to America. Krivak's writing style is reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy in that he writes with great imagery despite an economy of words. Likewise, his writing is reminiscent of Hemingway in the stoicism of his protagonist despite adversity and Remarque in his portrayal of World War I from the perspectiv...more
"Sojourn" has been described as a "Coming of Age" story which indeed it is, and then some.
Am American boy, born of Czech parents,returns with his father to the family village in the North East of the Hungarian Empire, Here they eke out a living as shepherds in the Carpathian mountains. His father teaches him and his adopted brother how to stalk, hunt and kill.
This skill finds them both in a crack Sniper Unit sent to the southern front after the outbreak of WWI. Only one of them survives to settl...more
Am American boy, born of Czech parents,returns with his father to the family village in the North East of the Hungarian Empire, Here they eke out a living as shepherds in the Carpathian mountains. His father teaches him and his adopted brother how to stalk, hunt and kill.
This skill finds them both in a crack Sniper Unit sent to the southern front after the outbreak of WWI. Only one of them survives to settl...more
This was the surprise of the summer. It is a reverse migration narrative -- a European who is the "new world" returns to Europe. It is also a coming age narrative for a young motherless boy. And, it is a war story (WWI). It is great on all those counts.
The prose is taut. So pared down that if you take a word out of a sentence or a sentence out of a paragraph, it would collapse. And the language is both poetic and meaningful.
Perhaps the most powerful quality of the work is that you cannot put i...more
The prose is taut. So pared down that if you take a word out of a sentence or a sentence out of a paragraph, it would collapse. And the language is both poetic and meaningful.
Perhaps the most powerful quality of the work is that you cannot put i...more
I think this is the first book I had ever read about World War I. The literature written about WWI that I had read before was probably the poem by W.B. Yeats only.
It is relatively a short story, but it took me to a greatly emotional journey. I cannot find good words to express how amazing this book was. It was so raw and painful to read, and at the same time, it was a beautifully written story that is worth reading.
The following paragraph is spoiler & my question. Unless you read to the very...more
It is relatively a short story, but it took me to a greatly emotional journey. I cannot find good words to express how amazing this book was. It was so raw and painful to read, and at the same time, it was a beautifully written story that is worth reading.
The following paragraph is spoiler & my question. Unless you read to the very...more
Three stars because I enjoyed rather than loved the book, even though I think it is well-written.
"The Sojourn" is a good title for this book which really is about the narrator's journey. There is no typical plot line with a specific conflict that must be resolved by the end of the novel. Characters enter and exit as they do in real life, often leaving an impact but not necessarily having grand literary significance. In this way the novel is not American (something I appreciate) and if someone to...more
"The Sojourn" is a good title for this book which really is about the narrator's journey. There is no typical plot line with a specific conflict that must be resolved by the end of the novel. Characters enter and exit as they do in real life, often leaving an impact but not necessarily having grand literary significance. In this way the novel is not American (something I appreciate) and if someone to...more
This novel reminds me of a story a father might tell a son in long sections, by the fire of a remote cabin in the woods, perhaps over a period of years. It has no heights nor moments of extreme tension, but has a sort of inevitability to it, like a melody that sounds familiar but that we listen to with eyes wide and head canted to catch phrases that are new and put together in surprising ways.
The literature of World War I makes one a pacifist. Some of the best writing about that time forces upon...more
The literature of World War I makes one a pacifist. Some of the best writing about that time forces upon...more
This short novel was a good read. I like the writing style of this author. sometimes it was lyrical other times not so much but always fluid and tight.
"They drilled in separate units, and although their uniforms never matched a single shade of Austrian field gray, their steps did, so that from the distance that Zlee and I often observed them, they appeared a flock of disparate-feathered doves who nevertheless clung in flight to a formation that bolted forward in an instant, left or right, withou...more
"They drilled in separate units, and although their uniforms never matched a single shade of Austrian field gray, their steps did, so that from the distance that Zlee and I often observed them, they appeared a flock of disparate-feathered doves who nevertheless clung in flight to a formation that bolted forward in an instant, left or right, withou...more
After Jozef Vinich's mother dies while saving his life as an infant, Jozef and his widowed father relocate from a small Colorado mining town back to their Austrian homeland. Though Jozef's boyhood is marred by lingering feelings of abandonment, resentment, ingrained sadness, and two bullying stepbrothers, his life is enhanced by frequent dreams of his mother and a close friendship with troubled distant cousin Zlee. Both boys revel in the family hunting trips, which hone their sharpshooting abili...more
A National Book Award Finalist, this book is a hidden gem. It tells the story of a boy born in Colorado in 1899 of recently-immigrated Hungarian parents. Through a twist of fate, he ends up being raised back in the "old country" in rural Austria-Hungary just before the first world war. His father is a shepherd and thus the boy spends most of his young life outdoors. It just happens that the foraging, hunting, trail-blazing skills he learns as a matter of course serve him well when the war breaks...more
I had a very strange relationship with this book. It was recommended by a friends dad, who thoroughly enjoyed it and before I read it, my father read it, based on my "recommendation" and he liked it as well. I would have to sum it up with an analogy. This book reminded me of an upcoming party that someone really wants to attend, but when he gets there, he is bored and wonders why he is there. I liked the first 100 pages, but each time I got into it, I was a bit bored, all the same. Yet, I was al...more
Inspired by the life of Krivak’s grandfather during World War I, The Sojourn is the story of Jozef Vinich, who was uprooted from a 19th-century mining town in Colorado by a shocking family tragedy to return with his father to an impoverished shepherd’s life in rural Austria-Hungary. When World War I starts, Jozef joins his cousin and brother-in-arms as a sharpshooter on the southern front, where he must survive a perilous trek across the frozen Italian Alps and capture by a victorious enemy.
A gr...more
A gr...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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I really enjoyed reading this book. A good companion book would be, "A Farewell to Arms", which takes place on the Italian side of the Italian front of WWI, and is also Hemingway's coming of age book as an ambulance driver during the war. This book is a coming of age book takes place on the Austria-Hungarian side of the Italian front, which is the land that borders Italy and Slovenia and has changed boundaries after both World Wars. The settings description was immaculate, and I was able to envi...more
I expected something on par of "Thief of Auschwitz" because it was a National Book Award nominee but it didn't have the power like "Thief" did. However, "The Sojourn" had a lot of interesting twist and turns, like peaks and valleys, in terms of plot development from the death of Jozef's mother to his life with his father to when he goes to WWI with Zlee to Zlee's death and the journey home with the gypsy. I think that's the book's strength. Despite what Jozef endured, he maintains his integrity...more
A very good book, should rank up there with other good “war” novels like All Quiet on the Western Front (same war too: WWI) and/or Hemingway’s novels. He’s an extraordinary writer with such exquisite command of language and imagery. Main character Jozef is born to two Slavic parents in the US but his mother dies in a tragic accident so the father brings him back to his homeland and trains him and adopted brother Zlee to be a shepherd and excellent marksmen. Both go to fight on the southern front...more
I really enjoyed this tale of a Czech born in the U.S. in the late 19th century, then, due to a family tragedy, brought back to the Old Country by his father. There his father remarries, but the stepmother is only interested in taking care of her own children, so his father takes him up to the mountains, where he learns the life of a shepherd, including how to hunt and to speak English. When a second cousin is left in his father's care, the two become as close as brothers, and when the Great War...more
The Sojourn is a beautifully written book that reads like a book written in the 19th century with its wonderful characterizations and excellent story telling. The book takes us from western America to the the battlefields of WW1 and on to the humble villages of eastern Europe. There is both brutality and humanity as the principal character seeks to find himself in a world he little understands but the quest is most memorable. It is like a more human version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
I real...more
I real...more
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Andrew Krivak is the author of The Sojourn, a novel set during WWI; A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life, a memoir about his eight years in the Jesuit Order; and the editor of The Letters of William Carlos Williams to Edgar Irving Williams, 1902-1912. The grandson of Slovak immigrants, he grew up in Pennsylvania, has lived in London, and has taught at Harvard, Boston College, and the Coll...more
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“The Northwestern Carpathians, in which I was raised, were a hard place, as unforgiving as the people who lived there, but the Alpine landscape into which Zlee and I were sent that early winter seemed a glimpse of what the surface of the earth looked and felt and acted like when there were no maps or borders, no rifles or artillery, no men or wars to claim possession of land, and snow and rock alone parried in a match of millennial slowness so that time meant nothing, and death meant nothing, for what life there was gave in to the forces of nature surrounding and accepted its fate to play what role was handed down in the sidereal march of seasons capable of crushing in an instant what armies might--millennia later--be foolish enough to assemble on it heights.
And yet there we were, ordered to march ourselves, for God, not nature, was with us now, and God would deliver us, in this world and next, when the time came for that.”
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And yet there we were, ordered to march ourselves, for God, not nature, was with us now, and God would deliver us, in this world and next, when the time came for that.”
“Banquo asked me how it felt to be alive when I saw so many of my comrades dead or dying, and I said that I had ceased to think of life or death because it seemed that I was destined to serve out the sentence of one for having delivered so well of the other, and that I saw the dead every night before I went to sleep as though they were still alive and standing before me.”
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updated Jan 15, 2012 09:07pm
Jul 02, 2012 06:14pm