How The Soldier Repairs The Gramophone

The Story

'For young Aleksandar Krsmanovic, his grandfather Slavko's stories endow life in Visegrad with a kaleidoscopic brilliance. Neighbors, friends, and family past and present take on a mythic quality; even the River Drina courses through town like the pulse of life itself. So when Grandpa Slavko dies suddenly of the fastest heart attack in the world, Aleksandar promises to carry on the tradition.' 'But then soldiers invade Visegrad - a town previously unconscious of racial and religious divides - and it is no longer important that Aleksandar is the best magician in the nonaligned states; suddenly it is important to have the right last name, and to convince the soldiers that Asija, the Muslim girl who turns up in his apartment building, is his sister. Though Aleksandar survives by fleeing to Germany, he is haunted by his past, and on the tenth anniversary of Grandpa Slavko's death, he returns to Visegrad to find out what happened to Asija and to the life he left behind.'--BOOK JACKET.