Imprint
- Abacus
- Little, Brown
Fiction, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
The lead debut paperback for Abacus in 2016, for fans of Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016
Growing up in Zagreb in the summer of 1991, 10-year-old Ana Juric is a carefree tomboy; she runs the streets with her best friend, Luka, helps take care of her baby sister, Rahela, and idolizes her father. But when civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, football games and school lessons are supplanted by sniper fire and air raid drills.
The brutal ethnic cleansing of Croats and Bosnians tragically changes Ana's life, and she is lost to a world of genocide and child soldiers; a daring escape plan to America becomes her only chance for survival. Ten years later she returns to Croatia, a young woman struggling to belong to either country, forced to confront the trauma of her past and rediscover the place that was once her home.
More books by Sara Novic
Praise for Girl at War
-
Set against the backdrop of the Bosnian Croat war, this vivid debut recalls Half of a Yellow Sun. Main character Ana's journey from a ten-year-old tomboy to young woman will leave you reeling. - Stylist
-
An unforgettable portrait of how war forever changes the life of the individual, Girl at War is a remarkable debut by a writer working with deep reserves of talent, heart, and mind. - Gary Shteyngart
-
Girl at War by Sara Novic depicts the still-fresh nightmare of the Serbo-Croatian war, survived by a girl much too young to know all she knows. Sara Novic writes with ruthless understatement not only about a modern city subjected to primitive horrors, but about young Ana's subsequent war against the American urge to forget. Sentence after perfectly-weighted sentence, her prose lands with the sound of a gavel. The first fifty pages might be the best fifty pages you read this year. - Jonathan Dee
-
Girl at War performs the miracle of making the stories of broken lives in a distant country feel as large and universal as myth. It is a brutal novel, but a beautiful one - New York Times
Sara Novic
Sara Novic teaches in the Popular Fiction MFA program at Emerson College, and is an instructor of Deaf studies at Stockton University. Her first novel, Girl at War, won the American Library Association's Alex Award, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Novic has an MFA in fiction and literary translation from Columbia University, and lives with her family in Philadelphia.
Find a book you’ll love, get our Word Up newsletter
.png?auto=compress&w=150&h=60&fit=crop&fm=jpg)
.png?auto=compress&w=150&h=60&fit=crop&fm=jpg)
Hachette Australia acknowledges and pays our respects to the past, present and future Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Our head office is located on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.
