Ngā whakaahuatanga whakarei nā Syndetics:

Growing up in Zagreb in the summer of 1991, 10-year-old Ana Juric is a carefree tomboy; she runs the streets with her best friend, Luka, helps take care of her baby sister, Rahela, and idolizes her father. But when civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, football games and school lessons are supplanted by sniper fire and air raid drills.

The brutal ethnic cleansing of Croats and Bosnians tragically changes Ana's life, and she is lost to a world of genocide and child soldiers; a daring escape plan to America becomes her only chance for survival. Ten years later she returns to Croatia, a young woman struggling to belong to either country, forced to confront the trauma of her past and rediscover the place that was once her home.

Girl At War is a haunting, compelling debut from a brilliant young writer, rooted in historical fact and personal experience. Sara has lived in the States and Croatia, and her novel bears witness to the haunting stories of her family and friends who lived through the height of the conflict, and reflects her own attempts to come to terms with her relationship to Croatia and its history. It is an extraordinary achievement for a novelist of any age, let alone age 26.

Ngā arotake i whakaratohia e Syndetics

Library Journal Review

We know the broad outlines of the terrible shattering of the Balkans in the early 1990s, but the essence of war is in the details, and Croatian-born Novic''s debut novel delivers a finely honed sense of what the bloodshed really meant for those who withstood it. Ana Juric', who's been blithely chasing around Zagreb with best friend Luka, gets a taste of what's to come when she goes to buy cigarettes for her godfather and is asked nastily whether she wants the Serbian or Croatian brand. Even as the fighting breaks out, Ana's little sister becomes so ill that the family must risk a trip to Sarajevo. Rahela is sent to America for treatment, but the rest of her family doesn't fare well on the trip home, and we next see Ana as a college student in New York. Adopted by the couple who also took in Rahela, Ana powerfully resists discussing a past that includes a bone-jarring turn as a child soldier, as revealed in flashback. Finally, Ana returns to Croatia, uncertain what she wants and uncertain in what she finds. VERDICT Novic's heartbreaking book is all the more effective for its use of personal rather than sensational detail and will be embraced by a wide range of readers. [See Prepub Alert, 10/13/14.]--Barbara -Hoffert, Library Journal © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.