Girl at War

Part war saga, part coming-of-age tale, part story of love and friendship, Girl at War is a powerful debut novel by a young writer whose work will appeal to readers of Anthony Marra, Téa Obreht, and Anthony Doerr.

Advance praise for Girl at War

“An unforgettable portrait of how war forever changes the life of the individual, Girl at War is a remarkable debut by a writer working with deep reserves of talent, heart, and mind.”—Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story

“Intimate, crushingly brutal, and beautiful at once, Girl at War is the work of someone far more mature than her years. It constitutes signal proof that even great history is insufficient to tell the story of the twentieth century in Europe: Great fiction like this book is required, too.”—Robert D. Kaplan, author of Balkan Ghosts and Asia’s Cauldron

“A breathtaking debut. With piercing clarity and devastating wit, Nović traces the enduring fallout of a childhood interrupted by conflict. Girl at War is an unforgettable, deeply affecting meditation on identity and memory, loss and survival, and what it means to feel at home in the world.”—Jennifer duBois, author of Cartwheel and A Partial History of Lost Causes

“Girl at War depicts the still-fresh nightmare of the Yugoslavian civil war, survived by a girl much too young to know all she knows. Sara Nović writes with ruthless understatement not only about a modern city subjected to primitive horrors, but about young Ana’s subsequent war against the American urge to forget. Sentence after perfectly weighted sentence lands with the sound of a gavel. The first fifty pages might be the best fifty pages you read this year.”—Jonathan Dee, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Privileges and A Thousand Pardons

“Girl at War is a harrowing, unforgettable novel. From the devastation of the Yugoslavian civil war, Sara Nović has wrought a deeply moving and necessary story of exile, family, and memory; a prayer over the unquiet graves of public and private trauma. Novic’s prose is so assured and wise that you’ll think this must be her tenth book rather than her first one, but indeed this is a debut—a major, unmissable debut.”—Justin Taylor, author of Flings

“Sara Nović is a brilliant storyteller with a large, generous heart—a bright new star in the literary firmament. And Girl at War is a haunting, chilling, and inspiring tale of a young woman’s coming of age in the shadow of war. It is as gorgeously crafted and compelling as it is moving, and there is a tenderness here, a sense of how exile—both physical and emotional—can shape our destinies, and of how friendship and love can allow us to survive and thrive.”—Jay Neugeboren, author of Imagining Robert and The Stolen Jew