How The Soldier Repairs The Gramophone
Bosnia and Herzegovina

How The Soldier Repairs The Gramophone

by Saša Stanišić

Coming of Age Historical Fiction Fiction 2009

Summary

Set during the Bosnian War and its aftermath, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone follows Aleksandar Krsmanović, a young boy growing up in the small Bosnian town of Višegrad. When war destroys the familiar world of his childhood, Aleksandar is forced to leave his home and seek refuge in Germany. Through his vivid imagination, memories, and storytelling, he attempts to make sense of violence, displacement, and the loss of people and places he once knew.

Blending humour, fantasy, and painful recollection, the novel captures the way a child experiences war without fully understanding its political and historical complexities. As Aleksandar grows older, storytelling becomes a way to preserve his past and reconnect with a homeland that has been irrevocably changed. Saša Stanišić’s novel explores memory, exile, identity, and the fragile boundary between lived experience and imagination.

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Country
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Europe
About the author
Saša Stanišić
Saša Stanišić

Saša Stanišić is a Bosnian-German novelist and short-story writer born in Višegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1978. He moved to Germany with his family in 1992 to escape the Bosnian War and grew up navigating the experience of migration and cultural displacement. Writing in German, Stanišić is known for his inventive narrative style, dark humour, and exploration of memory, identity, and belonging. His debut novel, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (2006), draws on childhood memories of the war and the imaginative world of a young boy confronting the loss of home. His novel Before the Feast (2014) explores rural life, collective memory, and the stories that shape a community. In 2019, he won the German Book Prize for Where You Come From (Herkunft), a genre-blending work that combines memoir, family history, and reflections on migration. Through playful experimentation and emotional depth, Stanišić examines how personal and collective histories influence the stories people tell about themselves.

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Details
Published
2009
Author
Saša Stanišić