Reviews tagging 'Genocide'

Herkunft by Saša Stanišić

5 reviews

ka_cam's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This book was a quietly moving wander through questions of belonging, crisis and post-crisis, memory, and family. Narratives and questions, broken apart, and spun simultaneously as the authors moves back and forth through time and narration from mythological and family pasts to the day of writing (the refrain today is DATE in 2018 and I am writing… oops up often). I personally enjoyed the style and musings, but could see how some might get lost or impatient depending on how the book resonates (or not) with you. 

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georgiepie's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

The last line of the first chapter reads: “It is March 7, 2018, in Višegrad, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Grandmother is eighty-seven years old and eleven years old.” This sentence alone captures the heart of the novel; a sense that appearance, reality, the past and the present are in a constant state of flux. It’s an auto-fiction, a memoir with exaggeration, it’s a journey through memories - tender, silly, horrible.

What a gem Where You Come From was. Less of an excavation of the mundane, a walk in dirty laundry, and more an examination of mundanity in the aftermath of a cataclysmic event. Stanišić shows us how to create a life after war changes everything, when the country you were rooted in no longer exists. Where did this country go? If the country no longer exists, what happens to its people? 

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qqjj's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny lighthearted mysterious reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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char1otte's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5


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lilalila's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.25


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