Coming of Age — The Book Roads

How The Soldier Repairs The Gramophone

Saša Stanišić

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.

Bosnia and Herzegovina 2009