Saša Stanišic: Magic in Motion

Hometown: Leipzig, Germany
Book: How The Soldier Repairs The Gramohone
For Fans Of: Gabriel García Márquez, Günter Wilhelm Grass, Jorge Luis Borges

"There's nothing there. Just sheep and me." Saša Stanišic happily describes the Swiss setting where he's retreated to write. One can't blame him for seeking a quiet place. The war in Bosnia still rings in his ears.

He'll soon treasure solitude for another reason—Stanišic is about to be very much in demand. His debut novel, How The Soldier Repairs The Gramophone, may be the finest to come out of Europe in this young century. A beautifully written, virtuosic recounting of Bosnian life before and after Europe's last war, Gramophone has earned international praise and a shortlisting for the German equivalent of the Booker Prize.

Stanišic, 30, writes of the end of the world where he grew up. Events are related through the eyes of a boy, Aleksandar, who childishly believes in magic and its power to reverse death. But magic can't stop war. Aleksandar flees to Germany with his family—until the haunting beauty of a girl, Danijela, draws him back to face the world that formed him.

In real life, Serbia invaded Stanišic's city when he was 14, taking it in nine days. The author fled to Heidelberg, Germany, with his "bourgeois family"—his father worked for a furniture factory and his mother arranged car sales. he adapted quickly, ambitiously tackling German, which he dreamed of teaching one day. A creative-writing program in Leipzig sidetracked him after undergrad studies, and by mining diaries from childhood, he began to write brilliantly—like Nabakov and Conrad and Ha Jin—in his acquired language. He sent out a chapter of the novel and won a prize. Suddenly, the offers began pouring in.

The refugee experience deeply shaped Stanišic. "This discontinuity—the war, I mean—has made a nomad out of me," he says. "Home is always where I'm not."

His migrations also offered unexpected rewards. "Languages are like a present. I now have the ability to use two or three languages to make a point. It's a great gift for a writer."