Heritage of Smoke

by Josip Novakovich

Overview

Short story writer, novelist and essayist Josip Novakovich returns with his first collection of stories since being named a finalist for the prestigious 2013 Man Booker International Prize. In Ex-Yu, he explores the major themes of war and exile, of religiosity and existentialism, that have defined his fiction and earned him a place among the pantheon of international writers addressing contemporary literature’s most pressing questions. Masterpieces such “Honey in the Carcase”, “White Mustache”, and “Acorns”, unflinching in their humanity and realism, take us into the brutal despair of the Bosnian War. In between, dry humor and world-weary wisdom infuse such exile preoccupations as soccer, terrorism, and cigarettes. Taken together, this latest collection comprises a bravely intelligent mosaic of what it means to be torn from one’s country and one’s self.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941088661
Publisher:	Dzanc Books
Publication date:	01/10/2017
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Josip Novakovich is a Croatian Canadian writer and the author of sixteen books, including short story collections, collections of narrative essays, and a novel. His work has been translated into Croatian, Bulgarian, Indonesian, Russian, Japanese, Italian, and French, among other languages. He has also published hundreds of short stories, poems, and essays in American and international journals and anthologies. He teaches English at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

Table of Contents

White Moustache 1

Wino 19

Dutch Treat 23

Be Patient 45

Rasputin's Awakening 71

Crossbar 79

Acorns 87

When the Saints Come 111

Heritage of Smoke 135

Eclipse Near Golgotha 153

Wanderer 159

Ideal Goalie 167

Strings 177

Remote Love 183

In the Same Boat 201

Editorial Reviews

Novakovich…has a fine ear for the tragic and the absurd…[These] stories are equally brilliant and strange.

The New York Times Book Review - Hilary Moss

11/07/2016
The characters in Novakovich’s excellent stories tend to be in extremis: people in the midst of war, or refugees escaping it, or veterans trying to forget it. His muscular prose and remarkable sense of place and history (both recent and somewhat distant) make for thrilling reading. What’s more surprising and impressive is the breadth of territory covered here. One story is set in Hungary in the 1950s; another follows a Dutchman named Martin Neeskens who worked for the U.N. during the Bosnian conflicts in the 1990s but now lives in New York. Another, set on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, involves a clutch of international roommates, including two Russian émigrés, crammed into an apartment. Themes overlap, but each story presents its own unique world. In the title story, Jovan, a refugee from Croatia now living in Belgrade, reconnects with an old friend named Danko. The very act of mentally reopening that door is complex—painful and confusing and grotesquely humorous, but above all inescapable. “Smoke is the flavor of our memories,” Jovan says. Novakovich’s evocative stories leave echoes after reading. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

2016-10-19
A host of characters grapple with the legacy of war, religious obsessions, surreal instances of violence, and an enduring guilt in this collection by a writer who was born in Yugoslavia and now lives in Canada.Novakovich's (Shopping for a Better Country, 2012, etc.) new collection abounds with stories of displacement. Characters leave the countries in which they were born to seek their fortunes elsewhere; religious pilgrims suffer misadventures as they grapple with their own mortality; and people find themselves taking on the personality traits of those they encounter under bizarre circumstances. The aftermath of war—whether those that took place in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s or the second world war decades earlier—leaves a heavy mark on many, which sometimes manifests as realistic depictions of trauma and grief and sometimes ventures into the surreal and mystical. In "Dutch Treat," a former U.N. peacekeeper encounters the survivor of a massacre in Srebrenica years later in New York. The two engage in a wary back-and-forth, as the former peacekeeper is both overcome by guilt and begins to take on qualities of the other man's paranoia. That kind of strange obsessiveness lends many of these stories a welcome unpredictability, whether Novakovich is writing about a grieving family or a soccer hooligan who seeks to make amends for his role in a horrific act of revenge. And some of the observations made throughout the book are wonderfully succinct. In one story of an interpreter caught up in war, for example, Novakovich summarizes the protagonist's predicament neatly: "It seemed incongruous to Ana that these men would have childhood memories." In a different story, another character offers a more humanistic take on things, saying, "All we are is soul." The stories told here span the gulf between the two statements. These often haunting stories of violence, faith, and disconnection make for a memorable voyage into a number of unsettled minds.

Kirkus Reviews