praise
“Novakovich knows how to tell a story, and his prose has an easy, elegant velocity.” —The New York Times
“A host of characters grapple with the legacy of war, religious obsessions, surreal instances of violence, and an enduring guilt….haunting stories of violence, faith, and disconnection.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Josip Novakovich is a writer of great skill, who possess an uncommon way with wit and calamity.” —Aminatta Forna, author of Memory of Love and Happiness
“Josip Novakovich’s bruising and beautiful short stories cast new light on the experience of war and exile. A potent and intoxicating brew of comedy and tragedy.” —Laila Lalami, author of The Moor’s Account
about the author
Josip Novakovich is a Croatian-American writer who resides in Canada. His work has been translated into Croatian, Bulgarian, Indonesian, Russian, Japanese, Italian, and French, among other languages. He was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013 and also received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, the Whiting Writer’s Award, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Fiction, as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Threepenny, Ploughshares, and many other journals, and has been anthologized in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, and O. Henry Prize Stories. He teaches English at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.