War, trauma and loss: a powerful story about escaping from the past

The Thursday Book

HOW THE SOLDIER REPAIRS THE GRAMOPHONE By Sasa Stanisic, trans. Anthea Bell WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON, Pounds 12.99 Order for Pounds 11.69 (free p&p) on 0870 079 8897

Teenage Aleksander passes his days playing by the river Drina in the Bosnian town of Visegrad, listening to the stories of his beloved Grandpa Slavko. When his grandfather dies of, apparently, the fastest heart attack in the world, Aleksander vows to carry on the story-telling tradition. But how ought one best tell a story? The challenge is at the heart of this stylistically complex novel.

A good story, says one character, is like the river Drina: "rough and broad, tributaries flow in to enrich it, it rises above its banks". Likewise, fragmentary and episodic scenes ebb and flow throughout the novel, at times dissipating the effect, at times suddenly, powerfully, washing over the reader.

"Artists have to ... rebuild reality," says Aleksander. It is a horrific reality with which they must deal as war spreads to Visegrad, and Serb police slaughter Muslims. Like Stanisic himself, Aleksander flees with his family to Germany, leaving behind his strong friendship with a Muslim girl, Asija.

"I want to make unfinished things," insists Aleksander. This is the engaging story of a boy who cannot bear that relationships, as much as the paintings he makes, might be finite. Aleksander refuses to accept irrevocability and move on. War sunders relationships, leaving loose ends. A decade later, he is tugged back to his home town by emotional ties he cannot snip away. He cannot be at peace until he knows what has happened to Asija. His attempts veer between the pathetic and extremely poignant as he painfully clings to the past.

The novel compellingly asks how damage may be healed. It is not only a gramophone but the human mind that demands restoration from the ravages of history. Aleksander struggles with the question of his origins, since his country no longer exists. He covets forms of escapism, such as a pervasive nostalgia for a time "When Everything Was Alright": the title of the book Aleksander writes, a novel within a novel. Stanisic probes the vices as well as virtues of storytelling. In some respects the storyteller is liberated from the past, while in others the story is a prison of trauma.

"You'll find two sorts of people ... people who miss everything and people who are indignant about everything." In this novel, Stanisic bravely and ambitiously examines ways of perceiving history and identity in a war-torn world, and of leaving places and people behind while retaining respect for lost relationships.

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