Girl At War - Sara Novic, Random House Books

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY &quot,BOOKPAGE, &quot,&quot,BOOKLIST, &quot,AND&quot, ELECTRIC LITERATURE&quot, ALEX AWARD WINNER &quot,LOS ANGELES TIMES &quot,BOOK PRIZE FINALIST LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN S PRIZE FOR FICTION For readers of &quot,The Tiger s Wife &quot,and &quot,All the Light We Cannot See&quot, comes a powerful debut novel about a girl s coming of age and how her sense of family, friendship, love, and belonging is profoundly shaped by war. Zagreb, 1991. Ana Juri is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a small apartment in Croatia s capital. But that year, civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering Ana s idyllic childhood. Daily life is altered by food rations and air raid drills, and soccer matches are replaced by sniper fire. Neighbors grow suspicious of one another, and Ana s sense of safety starts to fray. When the war arrives at her doorstep, Ana must find her way in a dangerous world. New York, 2001. Ana is now a college student in Manhattan. Though she s tried to move on from her past, she can t escape her memories of war secrets she keeps even from those closest to her. Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, Ana returns to Croatia after a decade away, hoping to make peace with the place she once called home. As she faces her ghosts, she must come to terms with her country s difficult history and the events that interrupted her childhood years before. Moving back and forth through time, &quot,Girl at War &quot,is an honest, generous, brilliantly written novel that illuminates how history shapes the individual. Sara Novi fearlessly shows the impact of war on one young girl and its legacy on all of us. It s a debut by a writer who has stared into recent history to find a story that continues to resonate today.