Harper Perennial
April Fool's Day : A Novel
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April Fool's Day
Author(s): Josip Novakovich
Review(s):
“An ambitious first novel ... The magic realism of the final sections is exemplary; Novakovich has found his groove.”
“[Ivan] is a fully rounded character, the type of protagonist...that we rarely find in fiction.”
“Delightfully neurotic . . . Novakovich brings a deft touch to his ambitious and unconventional first novel.”
“APRIL FOOL’S DAY is a wonder...[It] has an economy of style and narrative that all good readers will relish.”
“A heartfelt novel about the war-torn Balkans that’s actually quite funny...and touching.”
“Both humorous and horrifying as it traces one man’s misadventures.”
“Wickedly funny and deeply harrowing...Novakovich knows how to tell a story...Strange, lyrical beauty abounds here.”
“Disturbing and frequently beautiful...the novel is a Balkan conflation of Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Gogol’s DEAD SOULS, and SLAUGHERHOUSE FIVE.”
“There are very few native-born English speakers who write as well.
“[A] laugh-while-you-grimace novel...[Novakovich] writes with dark wit, and a touching sympathy.”
ISBN: 9780060583989
Author(s): Josip Novakovich
Ivan Dolinar is born in Tito's Yugoslavia on April Fool's Day, 1948 -- the auspicious beginning of a life that will be derailed by backfiring good intentions in a world of propaganda and paranoia. At age nineteen, an innocent prank cuts the young Croatian's budding medical career short and lands him in a notorious labor camp. Released on the eve of civil war, Ivan is drafted into the wrong army, becoming a pawn in an absurd conflict in which the rules and loyalties shift abruptly and without warning. But even in a world gone mad, one course of action remains eminently sane: survival.
Told with bitingly dark humor and a deep tenderness, April Fool's Day is both a devastating political satire and a razor-sharp parody of war.
Review(s):
“An ambitious first novel ... The magic realism of the final sections is exemplary; Novakovich has found his groove.”
“[Ivan] is a fully rounded character, the type of protagonist...that we rarely find in fiction.”
“Delightfully neurotic . . . Novakovich brings a deft touch to his ambitious and unconventional first novel.”
“APRIL FOOL’S DAY is a wonder...[It] has an economy of style and narrative that all good readers will relish.”
“A heartfelt novel about the war-torn Balkans that’s actually quite funny...and touching.”
“Both humorous and horrifying as it traces one man’s misadventures.”
“Wickedly funny and deeply harrowing...Novakovich knows how to tell a story...Strange, lyrical beauty abounds here.”
“Disturbing and frequently beautiful...the novel is a Balkan conflation of Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Gogol’s DEAD SOULS, and SLAUGHERHOUSE FIVE.”
“There are very few native-born English speakers who write as well.
“[A] laugh-while-you-grimace novel...[Novakovich] writes with dark wit, and a touching sympathy.”
ISBN: 9780060583989