Ivan Dolinar is a man caught in the crosscurrents of senseless wars, ridiculous dictators, and the usual and unusual difficulties of just trying to get by in the Balkans. His life begins, auspiciously, on April Fool's Day, 1948. As a boy growing up in a small town in Croatia, Ivan tries to love the people's dictator, Tito, but his love is not returned. In a world of propaganda and paranoia, young Ivan quickly discovers that the best of intentions can backfire. At nineteen, full of hope and ambition, he enters medical school in Novi Sad, Serbia, but his medical career is cut short by a prank, and he is sent to a notorious labor camp to dig rocks for two years. War breaks out soon after his release, and Ivan is drafted -- into the wrong army. A pawn in an absurd conflict in which rules and loyalties shift unexpectedly, Ivan finds himself in a struggle simply to survive.
From the tavern to the ivory tower to the battlefields, as Ivan's fortunes rise and fall faster than one can say "Yugoslavia," a tender novel emerges. Told with the bitingly dark humor ofttimes used to keep despair at bay, April Fool's Day is both a devastating political satire and a razor-sharp parody of war.

April Fool's Day: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Novakovich, Josip

United States

Harper

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.

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Harper-perennial

Tragicomedy of the highest order, this stellar collection is Croatian writer Novakovich's best ever.
 Hailed as one of the best short story writers of the 1990s, Josip Novakovich was praised by the New York Times for writing fiction that has "the crackle of authenticity, like the bite of breaking glass." In his new collection, he explores a war–torn Balkan world in which a schoolchild's innocence evaporates in a puff of cannon smoke, lust replaces love, and the joy of survival overrides all other pleasures. 
 As Serb, Croat, and Bosnian Muslim armies clash in the cities and countryside of the former Yugoslavia, it's hard to tell the front lines from the home front. The characters in Infidelities––soldiers and civilians alike––are caught in the ridiculous, often cruelly whimsical contradictions of war and the paranoia and folly of those who conduct it. In "Ribs," a Croatian woman whose husband has already been taken by the war will go to any length to keep her son out of the army, including sleeping with the draft officer, a tryst that leads to an unexpected, and disturbing, spiritual vision. A Buddhist soldier in the Bosnian Muslim military isly accused of being an informer to the enemy Serbs after his detachment ambushes itself in "Hail." A draft dodger is in the hospital for a transplant, in "A Purple Heart," when a high–ranking Croatian general steals the heart for himself (and dies) while the dodger suddenly discovers a new thirst for life.

Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust

In this issue of Tin House some of today's most prominent writers examine evil in its various manifestations, from war to torture to Satanism. Featured here, among others, are works by Francine Prose, author of A Changed Man, Nick Flynn, author of the award-winning collection of poems Some Ether, and Chris Adrian, whose short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, and The Best American Short Stories.

Tin House: Evil

Prose, Francine

Flynn, Nick

Adrian, Chris

Moonshine

Tin House Magazine

Three Deaths is acclaimed writer Josip Novakovich's first exclusively Canadian edition of his writing. This elegant edition works as a triptych consisting of three distinct genres: a personal essay, a short story, and a classic tale. All three exquisite texts concern the primary theme of death and are rendered with Novakovichs renowned and uncanny sense of syntax and narrative. Three Deaths is at once dark and poignant, fierce and tender, and is both the perfect introduction to the works of Novakovich and the ideal collector's edition for longtime fans.

Three Deaths

Short Stories & Anthologies

Invisible Pub

Ex-Yu: Stories

Esplanade Books

Tumbleweed

Salvation and Other Disasters

Graywolf Pr

Apricots from Chernobyl is a collection of beautifully crafted narratives on life in the former Yugoslavia, and subsequently in America, by widely published author and essayist Josip Novakovich. Exploring topics that include emigration, definition of borders, societal diversity, and the decay of religion, Novakovich's narratives are approachable and engaging. Whether describing his feelings of apprehension upon approaching a boarder, or the difficulties encountered when writing in a second "tongue," Novakovich is fresh, wry, and consistently entertaining. Apricots from Chernobyl offers a candid portrayal of global existence, skillfully blending its sometimes brutal but often ironic and humorous realities.

Apricots from Chernobyl

Graywolf Press

Yolk is a reflective and sometimes bizarre collection of stories by Croat writer-in-exile Josip Novakovich. Incorporating themes of unrequited love, obsession, war, faith, displacement, and death rituals, Novakovich's singular style reveals his affection for paradox and absurdity. Set primarily in Eastern Europe, these folktales also display Novakovich's unique social critique and dry wit. But more than the topicality gives the work its weight: the characters in Yolk touch on the universals of human experience-- the sublime as well as the base. The stories carry an odd notion of decay and infirmity, sexual peculiarity, and disturbed characters, all under the guise of a "once upon a time" innocence. Many readers were recently introduced to Novakovich with Graywolf's publication of Apricots from Chernobyl, a collection of spirited narratives that the Hungry Mind Review called "a terrific achievement ... a celebration of life."

Yolk

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