Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Length: 368 pages
Audiobook Length: 7 hours and 32 minutes
First Published: 2015
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Publisher’s Description
Zagreb, 1991. Ana Jurić is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a small apartment in Croatia’s capital. But that year, civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering Ana’s idyllic childhood. Daily life is altered by food rations and air raid drills, and soccer matches are replaced by sniper fire. Neighbors grow suspicious of one another, and Ana’s sense of safety starts to fray. When the war arrives at her doorstep, Ana must find her way in a dangerous world.
New York, 2001. Ana is now a college student in Manhattan. Though she’s tried to move on from her past, she can’t escape her memories of war—secrets she keeps even from those closest to her. Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, Ana returns to Croatia after a decade away, hoping to make peace with the place she once called home. As she faces her ghosts, she must come to terms with her country’s difficult history and the events that interrupted her childhood years before.
Moving back and forth through time, Girl at War is an honest, generous, brilliantly written novel that illuminates how history shapes the individual. Sara Nović fearlessly shows the impact of war on one young girl—and its legacy on all of us. It’s a debut by a writer who has stared into recent history to find a story that continues to resonate today.
Quotes from Girl at War
I knew in the end the guilt of one side did not prove the innocence of the other.
The more I lied, the closer I came to fitting in. Sometimes I even believed myself.
Worrying isn’t rational. No one makes a conscious decision to freak out about something.
Telling my story was supposed to be a good thing but it had just made everything worse.
About Sara Nović
Sara Nović is the author of Girl at War and True Biz. She is an assistant professor at Stockton University. She currently lives in Philadelphia. Visit the author’s website →
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