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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > How The Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

How The Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

A fresh, poignant and very funny novel about a young child caught up in the Bosnian conflict.

Aleksandar is Comrade-in-Chief of fishing, the best magician in the non-aligned States and painter of unfinished things. He knows the first chapter of Marx’s Das Kapital by heart but spends most of his time playing football in the Bosnian town of Visegrad on the banks of the river Drina.

When his grandfather, a master storyteller, dies of the fastest heart attack in the world while watching Carl Lewis’s record, Aleksandar promises to carry on the tradition. However when the shadow of war spreads to Visegrad, the world as he knows it stops.

Suddenly it is not important how heavy a spider’s life weighs, or why Marko’s horse is related to Superman. Suddenly it is important to have the right name and to pretend that the little Muslim girl Asija is his sister. Then Aleksandar’s parents decide to flee to Germany and he must leave his new friend behind.

Author

Saša Stanišić

Saša Stanišić

Books

How The Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Saša Stanišić was born 1978 in Višegard in Bosnia-Herzegovina and lives in Germany since 1992. He has published short stories, audio plays and essays, and is engaged in literary performances and theatre. How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone is his first novel and was shortlisted for the German Book Award as well as winning several other major prizes with translations into 24 languages forthcoming. Stanišić is also the recipient of the prestigious Graz and Iowa writing fellowships.

Translator

Anthea Bell

Anthea Bell

Books

How The Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Back to Back

Gone To Ground

All for Nothing

Anthea Bell was born in Suffolk, England, and is the daughter of writer Adrian Bell. She was educated at the University of Oxford (Somerville College) and has worked for many years as a freelance translator, mainly from French and German, also serving three terms on the committee of the UK Translators’ Association, and nine years on the jury panel of the Schlegel-Tieck German translation prize. She was appointed OBE in the New Year Honours List 2010. Her translations include W. G. Sebold’s Austerlitz, which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2002. She was awarded the Federal German Verdiestkreuz (Cross of Merit) in 2015.

Published by

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008
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A fresh, poignant and very funny novel about a young child caught up in the Bosnian conflict.

Aleksandar is Comrade-in-Chief of fishing, the best magician in the non-aligned States and painter of unfinished things. He knows the first chapter of Marx’s Das Kapital by heart but spends most of his time playing football in the Bosnian town of Visegrad on the banks of the river Drina.

When his grandfather, a master storyteller, dies of the fastest heart attack in the world while watching Carl Lewis’s record, Aleksandar promises to carry on the tradition. However when the shadow of war spreads to Visegrad, the world as he knows it stops.

Suddenly it is not important how heavy a spider’s life weighs, or why Marko’s horse is related to Superman. Suddenly it is important to have the right name and to pretend that the little Muslim girl Asija is his sister. Then Aleksandar’s parents decide to flee to Germany and he must leave his new friend behind.

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