Stanišić, Saša

Saša Stanišić: How the Soldier repairs the gramophone

Saša Stanišić may have produced one of those masterpieces doomed to miss whatever it is that greatness deserves. When he was fourteen years old the author’s family fled to Essen in Germany where he has remained and managed to establish himself as a writer. This, his first novel, was short listed for the German Book Prize. HOW THE SOLDIER REPAIRS THE GRAMOPHONE is, essentially, a war novel. Certainly not one seeking to glorify war, rather it concentrates on the damage done when ideological and religious differences turn citizen against citizen and the social fabric is ripped to pieces. The narrative is all the more affecting since it is transparently and profoundly autobiographical.

From the first word readers should be captivated by the thoughts of a youth who is bonded to his family, to the town where they all live, to the river, to so much that has contributed to his developing world view. It is tempting to write ‘the story starts…’ but this novel isn’t really like that. Neither does it fit within that first half of the twentieth century’s arty, “stream-of-consciousness” category. Rather it connects episodes in a life and within an imagination as they may be represented in unstructured conversations with others as well as inside the head of the particular one who is directly connected with them.

“Very old people live two lives. In one life they cough, they walk with a stoop, they sigh: oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! In the other life, their eye-patch life, they talk to stinging nettles about the neighbours, they believe they’re sheriffs, or they fall in love with deck chairs or bees.” So a boy, Aleksandar, remembers Grandpa Slavko who magically empowered him with the gift of a hat and wand. Magic, yes, but only to be used according to the tenets of the Communist League of Yugoslavia. “The most valuable gift of all is invention, imagination…. Remember that, Aleksandar, said Grandpa very gravely as he put the hat on my head, you remember that and imagine the world better than it is.”

All that was from the time of Tito’s rule, which has become a golden era. It is especially ironical that the past remembered was the time of a Communist, but still at least outwardly united, Yugoslavia. Having handed down the magic wisdom, Grandpa dies. Confused by such an arbitrary parting, Aleksandar resolves to avoid bringing any and all projects to their resolution. This leads to the production of lots of unfinished paintings and to readers being lolled into the false security by what might appear to be little more than a charmingly dreamy remembrance.

But soon we learn that “Everything that is finished is over, all deaths seem to me uncalled-for, unhappy, undeserved. Summers turn to winter, houses are demolished, people in photos turn to photos on gravestones.” No, this is not another escapist fairytale. This is a story of war, of social dissolution.

Aleksandar’s home town, Višegrad, the river, the people – all such ordinary people – will become lost in the horrors of the Bosnian War. And this boy for whom a grandfather’s death might now seem to have been some sort of omen, suddenly he must observe a life within which real soldiers take control, carry out real killings and rape women at will. In this place suddenly to be a Muslin means that you deserve to die. But isn’t Aleksandar’s mother part Muslim and part Croatian? And what about the girl, Asija, whom he pretended was his sister when the soldiers went on the rampage? What could have happened to her?

Around 2002 a grown up Aleksandar returns to Višegrad. But where are the remembered fishing trips, the local band’s performances, the abundant plum harvests? And will the town ever witness again those curious family rites surrounding the establishment of an indoor toilet? While readers may never forget this disturbingly captivating book, so, others people altogether elsewhere will be experiencing directly the loss of some remembered, or will it be largely imagined, golden era.

The Book

Stanisic, Sasa: How the soldier repairs the gramophone / translated by Anthea Bell. – London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008. - 277 pages.
ISBN 0297852981
Original title: Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert (German)