Josip Novakovich – författare

Ivan Dolinar is born in Tito''s Yugoslavia on April Fool''s Day, 1948 -- the auspicious beginning of a life that will be derailed by backfiring good intentions in a world of propaganda and paranoia. At age nineteen, an innocent prank cuts the young Croatian''s budding medical career short and lands him in a notorious labor camp. Released on the eve of civil war, Ivan is drafted into the wrong army, becoming a pawn in an absurd conflict in which the rules and loyalties shift abruptly and without warning. But even in a world gone mad, one course of action remains eminently sane: survival.

Told with bitingly dark humor and a deep tenderness, April Fool''s Day is both a devastating political satire and a razor-sharp parody of war.

Josip Novakovich''s Vignettes offers a wide-ranging look at his life, including his youth in hometown Daruvar, Croatia, where he attended school in a castle on a hill with barrels of whites and reds stored in the basement, "my peers and I learned the basics of math, grammar, history, and literature, somewhat dizzy and fumigated in wine vapors that seeped upward through the oiled oak floors."​

Over the course of seventeen short stories, Novakovich traces his relationship with wine: "Wine may have a lot to do with my interest in literature, or it may be the other way around-I am not sure which came first, those vapors, or the stories involving wine? And so, a bit of wine, in a small glass, a bit of truth, in a few lines."​

A collection of narrative essays on family, history, and travel from Croation American Josip Novakovich, a Whiting Writers'' Award winner and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Having fled his homeland of Yugoslavia, leaving behind kin and community, the author here captures significant portraits of what is lost, what is remembered, and what remains. Within those moments of fresh clarity of the past are the instances of repeated culture shock that never seem to lose their harsh edges.

From Man Booker International Prize finalist Josip Novakovich comes a satiric novel with teeth—a tale of Russia in the early aughts, perfect for fans of Dostoevsky and Gary Shteyngart.

In this picaresque novel set in the early 2000s, David, an investment banker with Eastern European roots, goes bankrupt from the Enron fiasco, and moves to Russia to do some soul-searching. In the shadow of the Khazan cathedral, he’s arrested for the murder of two Georgian wine-importers.  David is imprisoned at Kresty, bewildered and alone. One day, Putin himself visits, with a modest proposal for David: to travel to Georgia and slip plutonium into the president’s wine. This is the price of freedom: to assassinate a president.

Told with Josip Novakovich''s signature skill and satiric wit, Rubble of Rubles delves into the absurdity and menace of totalitarianism. At the crossroads of literary fiction, satire, and crime, this is a novel for modern fans of Notes from Underground and Absurdistan.