April Fool's Day

From Publishers Weekly
Like Aleksandar Hemon and Ha Jin, short story writer Novakovich (Salvation and Other Disasters) manages the feat of writing vibrantly and inventively in a second language, shaping English to the dictates of his satiric, folk-tinged storytelling. His debut novel tells the story of Ivan Dolinar, a Croatian Everyman born in the town of Nizograd in 1948. As a boy, Ivan is a bully and a patriot (as one chapter title puts it, "Ivan loves the state apparatus"), and he grows up longing to serve his country. After a buffoonish but successful stint in medical school, he's about to become a doctor when a foolish joke gets him arrested and sent to a labor camp on a desolate Adriatic island. He's released three years later, but his criminal record makes him unfit for everything except graduate school in philosophy. Demoralized and hapless, he's drafted into the Serb-heavy Yugoslav army to fight his fellow Croats; he soon deserts and is hustled into uniform on the other side. Novakovich gives a pithy, biting account of the Balkan wars, following it up by an even more caustic account of Ivan's marriage to a woman he raped during the war. The story culminates with Ivan's first-person account of his own death and afterlife. Novakovich's English is foreign-tinged and brash, giving a jolt of chaotic energy to this dark Balkan comedy. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Politics turn personal for Ivan Dolinar, born April 1, 1948, in Croatia, as the ricocheting course of his life reflects the tumult of his home country. His medical studies are cut short when he's imprisoned after a classmate jokes about assassinating Tito, who--along with Indira Gandhi--visits the labor camp and offers Ivan a Cuban cigar and a longer sentence. Released but barred from medicine, Ivan is drafted into the Yugoslav army just before the Croats organize their own defense force, putting him into an absurd and horrific war with his own countrymen. Finding his captain raping his former classmate Selma, Ivan rescues and later marries her, raising her daughter as his own. But marriage, fatherhood, hypochondria, and adultery fail to bring the peace Ivan finds in life after death. Novakovich has recycled some of his earlier stories-- Milan's war experience in "Crimson," from Salvation and Other Disasters (1998), becomes Ivan's, and sculptor-headstone carver Marko Kovachevich in "Rust," from Yolk (1995), reappears largely verbatim--to form this ultimately sardonic view of getting by in the Balkans. Michele Leber
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Columbus Dispatch
"Delightfully neurotic . . . Novakovich brings a deft touch to his ambitious and unconventional first novel."


Maud Casey, New York Times Book Review
"Wickedly funny and deeply harrowing...Novakovich knows how to tell a story...Strange, lyrical beauty abounds here."


Keith Botsford, The Republic of Letters
"APRIL FOOL’S DAY is a wonder...[It] has an economy of style and narrative that all good readers will relish."


USA Today
"Both humorous and horrifying as it traces one man's misadventures"


Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Disturbing and frequently beautiful...the novel is a Balkan conflation of Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Gogol’s DEAD SOULS, and SLAUGHERHOUSE FIVE."


Brian Rafferty, GQ
"A heartfelt novel about the war-torn Balkans that’s actually quite funny...and touching."


Publishers Weekly
"Like Aleksander Hernon and Ha Jin, Novakovich writes vibrantly, inventively, giving a jolt of energy to this dark Balkan comedy."


Keith Botsford, The Republic of Letters
"APRIL FOOL’S DAY is a wonder...[it] has an economy of style and narrative that all good readers will relish."


USA Today
"Both humorous and horrifying as it traces one man’s misadventures."


Starred Kirkus Reviews
"An agreeably eccentric first novel from one of the more interesting and unusual contemporary writers."


Book Description

Ivan Dolinar is a man caught in the crosscurrents of senseless wars, ridiculous dictators, and the usual and unusual difficulties of just trying to get by in the Balkans. His life begins, auspiciously, on April Fool's Day, 1948. As a boy growing up in a small town in Croatia, Ivan tries to love the people's dictator, Tito, but his love is not returned. In a world of propaganda and paranoia, young Ivan quickly discovers that the best of intentions can backfire. At nineteen, full of hope and ambition, he enters medical school in Novi Sad, Serbia, but his medical career is cut short by a prank, and he is sent to a notorious labor camp to dig rocks for two years. War breaks out soon after his release, and Ivan is drafted -- into the wrong army. A pawn in an absurd conflict in which rules and loyalties shift unexpectedly, Ivan finds himself in a struggle simply to survive.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Ivan Dolinar is a man caught in the crosscurrents of senseless wars, ridiculous dictators, and the usual and unusual difficulties of just trying to get by in the Balkans. His life begins, auspiciously, on April Fool's Day, 1948. As a boy growing up in a small town in Croatia, Ivan tries to love the people's dictator, Tito, but his love is not returned. In a world of propaganda and paranoia, young Ivan quickly discovers the best of intentions can backfire. At nineteen, full of hope and ambition, he enters medical school in Nova Sad, Serbia, but his medical career is cut short by a prank, and he is sent to a notorious labor camp to dig rocks for two years. War breaks out soon after his release, and Ivan is drafted - into the wrong army. A pawn in an absurd conflict in which rules and loyalties shift unexpectedly, Ivan finds himself in a struggle simply to survive." From the tavern to the ivory tower to the battlefields, as Ivan's fortunes rise and fall faster than one can say "Yugoslavia," a tender novel emerges. Told with dark humor ofttimes used to keep despair at bay, April Fool's Day is both a political satire and parody of war.

FROM THE CRITICS

Maud Casey - The New York Times

This wickedly funny and deeply harrowing first novel from Josip Novakovich, a Croatian expatriate who came to the United States at 20 � in part to avoid enlistment in the Yugoslav Federal Army � relates the picaresque tale of one Ivan Dolinar, born in Croatia on April Fool's Day in 1948, around the time of Tito's historic split with Stalin.

Publishers Weekly

Like Aleksandar Hemon and Ha Jin, short story writer Novakovich (Salvation and Other Disasters) manages the feat of writing vibrantly and inventively in a second language, shaping English to the dictates of his satiric, folk-tinged storytelling. His debut novel tells the story of Ivan Dolinar, a Croatian Everyman born in the town of Nizograd in 1948. As a boy, Ivan is a bully and a patriot (as one chapter title puts it, "Ivan loves the state apparatus"), and he grows up longing to serve his country. After a buffoonish but successful stint in medical school, he's about to become a doctor when a foolish joke gets him arrested and sent to a labor camp on a desolate Adriatic island. He's released three years later, but his criminal record makes him unfit for everything except graduate school in philosophy. Demoralized and hapless, he's drafted into the Serb-heavy Yugoslav army to fight his fellow Croats; he soon deserts and is hustled into uniform on the other side. Novakovich gives a pithy, biting account of the Balkan wars, following it up by an even more caustic account of Ivan's marriage to a woman he raped during the war. The story culminates with Ivan's first-person account of his own death and afterlife. Novakovich's English is foreign-tinged and brash, giving a jolt of chaotic energy to this dark Balkan comedy. Agent, Anne Edelstein. (Sept. 7) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews