Where You Come From by Saša Stanišić (Before the Feast; How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone) is a playful, formally adventurous novel that freely blends truth and fiction in its meditation on homelands. Born in Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists, Stanišić's family was forced to flee to Germany during the Bosnian War in 1992. The line between novel and memoir is frequently blurred, with the novel mimicking his grandmother's surreal existence as her dementia progresses and the past increasingly intrudes on the present. In perhaps the novel's most enjoyable--and melancholy--surprise, it includes a branching choose-your-own-adventure with a variety of endings and fantastical digressions.
The concerns here are weighty, frequently referencing the unreality of being from a place that no longer exists, a diverse nation torn apart by genocidal violence. However, it would be a mistake to view Where You Come From as a somber book, with the author's earnestness both undercut and reinforced by humor.
The novel is separated into short chapters, with readers receiving anything from nostalgic memories of a Yugoslavian soccer team to sardonic descriptions of the former nation's "problems" and how they were or weren't solved: "The problem of critics of the government was solved by locking them up on an island, and that definitely didn't feel exactly great, of course." Where You Come From is determined to surprise and unmoor readers, perhaps in the same way the author/protagonist found the course of his own life surprising and disconcerting, with the author's restless imagination a constant, delightful companion. --Hank Stephenson, the Sun magazine, manuscript reader