Ismet Prcic's brilliant, provocative, and propulsively energetic debut
is about a young Bosnian, also named Ismet Prcic, who has fled his
war-torn homeland and is now struggling to reconcile his past with his
present life in California.
He is advised that in order to make peace with the corrosive guilt he
harbors over leaving behind his family behind, he must "write
everything." The result is a great rattlebag of memories, confessions,
and fictions: sweetly humorous recollections of Ismet's childhood in
Tuzla appear alongside anguished letters to his mother about the
challenges of life in this new world. As Ismet's foothold in the present
falls away, his writings are further complicated by stories from the
point of view of another young man--real or imagined--named Mustafa, who
joined a troop of elite soldiers and stayed in Bosnia to fight. When
Mustafa's story begins to overshadow Ismet's new-world identity, the
reader is charged with piecing together the fragments of a life that has
become eerily unrecognizable, even to the one living it.
Shards is a thrilling read--a harrowing war story, a stunningly
inventive coming of age, and a heartbreaking saga of a splintered
family.
