Where You Come from

In August, 1992, a boy and his mother flee the war in Yugoslavia and arrive in Germany. Six months later, the boy's father joins them, bringing a brown suitcase, insomnia, and a scar on his thigh. Sasa Stanisic's Where You Come From is a novel about this family, whose world is uprooted and remade by war: their history, their life before the conflict, and the years that followed their escape as they created a new life in a new country.

Blending autofiction, fable, and choose-your-own-adventure, Where You Come From is set in a village where only thirteen people remain, in lost and made-up memories, in coincidences, in choices, and in a dragons' den. Translated by Damion Searls, it's a novel about homelands, both remembered and imagined, lost and found. A book that playfully twists form and genre with wit and heart to explore questions that lie inside all of us: about language and shame, about arrival and making it just in time, about luck and death, about what role our origins and memories play in our lives.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Tin House
Published: 12/07/2021
ISBN: 9781951142759
Pages: 364
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 1.20d
Award: National Book Awards - Nominee

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 09/20/2021
Kirkus Reviews 10/15/2021
Shelf Awareness 12/07/2021