Heritage of Smoke

Short story writer, novelist, and essayist Josip Novakovich returns with his first collection of stories since being named a finalist for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize. In Heritage of Smoke, he explores the major themes of emigration and culture clash, war and exile, and religiosity and existentialism that have defined his fiction and earned him the American Book Award and Whiting Writer’s Award, as well as praise from Kirkus Reviews as “one of the best short-story writers of the decade.” With dry humor and world-weary wisdom, Novakovich explores the sorrows and absurdities of the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, constructing a bravely intelligent mosaic of what it means to be torn from one’s country and one’s self.