The Boy's Marble

A novel of war witnessed through the eyes of a child — and a strange reunion, twenty years later, in Montreal.

Release: 2022-09-18

Language: English

199 Pages Trade Paperback

ISBN: 978-1-77183-739-2

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The Boy's Marble tells the story of experiencing a war through the eyes of a child. Separated as children during the Sarajevo Siege, twenty years later the narrator meets someone in Montreal, Canada who reminds her of the boy. They were supposed to run away together; only he never came. She has not seen him since and wonders whether this person could really be him. This novel differs from other war-fiction books in that it looks at these tragic events through the eyes of a child in a—one could say—healthy way. While the narrator doesn't sweep the painful and tragic memories under the rug, she also doesn't place them centre stage. The story unfolds in a way that wakes hope in the reader, while getting across just how useless, meaningless and absurd war is.

Praise

“The Boy's Marble is an instant classic of all war fiction, though its story originates in the Siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996). The woman narrator, suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, is unable to progress in her post-refugee life in Montreal because she endures incessant flashbacks to her survival of the Siege that make everyday, domestic acts seem a gauntlet of recurrent terrors, pressures, tortures, and violences. A kind of mash up of A Woman in Berlin and Alice in Wonderland, Nuhanović's novel introduces us to a never-never, urban, no-man's-land, a sidereal universe, of Montreal potholes doubling as Sarajevo blast craters, of citizens reduced to psychos and sleepwalkers, and of the Judeo-Christian God become a slapstick figure. I do not hesitate in declaring The Boy's Marble a masterpiece and the arrival of Ms. Nuhanović to our bookshelves as no less than a coronation with laurels.”

— George Elliott Clarke, 7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2016 & 2017)

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