“Impressive . . . Inventive . . . Pushes against convention, logic, chronology . . . Ambitious and deep . . .

[Prcic]
succeeds at writing an unsettling and powerful novel.” —Dana Spiotta, New York Times Book Review

PAPERBACK E-BOOK

Imprint Page Count

Black Cat 416

Publication Date ISBN-13

October 04, 2011 978-0-8021-7081-1

Dimensions US List Price

5.5" x 8.25" $18.00

Ismet Prcic was born in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1977 and immigrated to America in 1996. Shards is his first novel.

Read More About Ismet Prcic

About The Book

Ismet Prcic’s brilliant and provocative debut novel is about a young Bosnian, also named Ismet Prcic, who has fled his war-torn homeland and is
now struggling to reconcile his past with his present life in California. He is advised that in order to move forward he must “write everything.”
The result is a great rattle bag of memories, confessions, and fictions: sweetly humorous recollections of Ismet’s childhood in Tuzla appear
alongside anguished letters to his mother about the challenges of life in this new world. And as Ismet’s foothold in the present falls away, his
writings are further complicated by stories from the point of view of another young man—real or imagined—named Mustafa, who joined a troop
of elite soldiers and stayed in Bosnia to fight. When Mustafa’s story begins to overshadow Ismet’s New World identity, the reader is charged with
piecing together the fragments of a life that has become eerily unrecognizable, even to the one living it.

Shards is a thrilling read—a harrowing war story, a stunningly original coming-of-age novel, and a heartbreaking saga of a splintered family.
Remarkable for its propulsive energy and stylistic daring, Shards marks the debut of a gloriously gifted writer.

Tags LITERARY

Praise
“Impressive . . . Inventive . . . Pushes against convention, logic, chronology . . . Ambitious and deep . . . [Prcic] succeeds at writing an unsettling
and powerful novel.” —Dana Spiotta, New York Times Book Review

“Irresistible . . . Fierce, funny, and real.” —Teresa Budasi, Chicago Sun-Times

“So gripping and shaking that there will be no casual readers of this book.” —Y. S. Fing, Washington Independent Review of Books

“Fierce, funny and real, it also says much about war, exile, guilt and fear.” —Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times

KEEP READING

Awards
Winner of the Ken Kessey Oregon Book Award
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Chicago Sun-Times Best Book of the Year
A B&N Discover Great New Writers Selection
An Oregonian Top 10 Northwest Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award
Shortlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize
Shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize for Writing

Excerpt
In wartime, when his country needed him the most—his shooting finger for defending, his body for a shield, his sanity and humanity as a
sacrifice for future generations, his blood for fertilization of its soil—in these, most pressing times, Mustafa’s special forces combat training lasted
twelve days. He ran the obstacle course exactly twenty-four times, he threw fake hand grenades through a truck tire from various distances
exactly six times, he practiced marksmanship with an air rifle so that bullets were not wasted, he got covered with blankets and beaten by his
peers for talking in his sleep at least once. He did countless push-ups and sit-ups, chin-ups and squats, lunges and curls, mindless repetitions
designed not to make him fit but to break him, so that when he did break, the drill sergeant could instruct him in the ways of military hierarchy
and make him an effective combatant, one who was too scared to not follow orders and who would fucking die when he was told to fucking die.

The knife guy taught him where to stick the knife for what effect and he stabbed hanging sacks of sand with people drawn on them. The mine
guy showed him how to set up antivehicle mines and pointed out all their deadly charms. The army doctor took a swig of plum brandy and told
him that war was a giant piece of shit and that he, Mustafa, was a chunk of corn in that shit and then warned him not to come to his office again
until he had a gut wound so big he could canoe right through it. That was about it.

Reading Group Guide

1. The author begins the book with two epigraphs: an excerpt from Hamlet, in which the hero gives advice to the players, and lines from a poem
by Iraqi writer Saadi Youssef. How do both epigraphs speak to the themes of the book? Might they be taken together as the author’s statement of
purpose? Are there similarities between Ismet’s and Hamlet’s preoccupations? And perhaps also Asmir’s, who quotes from Hamlet’s advice to the
players (p. 106)? Where else in the book does the image of shards recur?

2. Shards plays with the conventions of both the novel and memoir, with Ismet acting as the novel’s hero as well as the author of the memoir
within it. How is this layering of fiction and nonfiction elements essential to the larger story? Ismet writes in his diary that as he was working on
his memoir “things—little fictions—started to sneak in. I agonized over them, tried to eradicate them from the manuscript, but it made the
narrative somehow less true” (p. 22). How might these inventions make his story more true?

3. Why is Ismet more affected by seeing what he thinks is Mustafa Nalic’s grave than by seeing his own cousin’s (p. 168)? How much of
Mustafa’s existence has Ismet imagined and what purpose do his imaginings serve? Does Mustafa help give shape to the pain of war that Ismet
experiences? How do their life stories intertwine and then fuse together at the end?
4. The novel alternates between Ismet’s stories (told in the first person point of view) and Mustafa’s stories (told in third person) and jumps
forward and backward in time. How would the meaning of the story change if it were told chronologically using only one point of view? Why
has the author chosen to tell some parts of the story in the second person point of view (see sections beginning on pp. 78, 313, and 378)?

5. How does the author establish the setting as uniquely Bosnian? What do you learn about the culture? About family life and gender roles?
About village life and values (see pp. 85-93)? About the role of religion in daily life? About the politics of the region and the war? How much of
the story depends on this particular setting and how could it be seen as a coming-of-age story that might be set anywhere?

6. Notebooks, diaries, and letters are the forms the author employs to tell Ismet’s story. How might a writer’s tone, choice of content, and level of
honesty be different in each form? How do Ismet’s word choices and tone of voice help establish his character? Ismet is very self-aware, but are
there things he doesn’t see about himself ?

7. How does Ismet develop a sense of identity as he grows up—what distinguishes him in his own mind from others? How does his sense of
identity change when he leaves Bosnia and becomes “Izzy” in America? How does Ismet situate himself in relation to his fellow refugees arriving
at the airport? Ismet contemplates his friend Eric’s existence and then thinks about his own on p. 43. Do you think his dreams of belonging and
being anonymous can ever be reconciled?

8. How has Ismet’s awareness of his mother’s unhappiness and fragility helped shape him? What are his mother’s strengths? Does Ismet’s
relationship with his mother change as he matures? Consider the symbolic implications of Ismet’s cat/person dream (p. 342). What do you think
his mother wants to tell him that she cannot bring herself to write in her letter?

9. Ismet’s first two girlfriends, Asya and Allison, pursue him and he leaves them both. Does his relationship with Melissa represent a change?
What attracts him to each of these women? What does he learn through his relationships with them?

10. As war is brewing, fifteen-year-old Ismet tells his mother, “I thought we were all Yugoslavs,” then wonders why he’s broached a question he
already knows the answer to: “Maybe the Communist message of Brotherhood and Unity had been so thoroughly drummed into my head that it
surfaced robotically and overrode my actual experience” (p. 6). Does this awareness of doublespeak and propaganda contribute to Ismet’s comedic
sense and ironic detachment? Return to Ismet’s description of Tuzla’s architecture and the naming of its municipal offices (pp. 97-98)—what
picture do you get of Bosnia’s Communist legacy and its effects on its citizens’ approaches to life?

11. Can Ismet’s childhood experiences of faking appendicitis (pp. 34-36) and directing the ninja high jinks in the forest (pp. 51-56) be seen as his
first experiments in theater? What does he learn from them and how does his relationship to acting deepen with his membership in the theater
troupe? When Ismet and the others stage an impromptu tableau vivant in the park and the shelling starts (pp. 110-111), how does their act take
on larger meaning?

12. Ismet relates Asmir’s theory that ‘democracy is not the way of the theater and if theater is to be worthy there is lots to be learned from
dictatorships’ (p. 101). What sort of tactics does Asmir use to achieve successful performances? Do they echo the humiliation and submission
tactics Mustafa endures in military life? How is the power struggle between Brada and Asmir described (pp. 105-108)?

13. Can Asmir be seen as an alternative father figure? What does Ismet admire about him? How is Asmir, though charismatic, also flawed, like
Ismet’s father? Do you have any sympathy for his father?

14. How are Bosnian Serbs depicted in the book? What sort of neighbors are the Stojkovics? What sort of person is Nebojsha, the Chetnik who
surrenders himself in Mustafa’s trench (pp. 206-210)? When Mustafa (existing in some fusion with Ismet in this chapter) realizes he’s at a party
with a bunch of Chetnik-supporting Serbs in California, why doesn’t he leave immediately (pp. 317-330)? What is his attitude toward Jovan?

15. Ismet explains that the war “had begun with politicians fighting on television, talking about their nationalities, their constitutional rights,
each claiming that his people were in danger” (p. 6). The television is on throughout the book, including at important moments, as when Ismet’s
family talks with him about immigrating to America (pp. 183-185). How does TV affect Ismet’s experience not only of the war but of his daily
life?

16. Why do you think Mustafa’s special forces unit chose to call itself the Apaches? What distinguishes the Apaches from the regular army?
How does Mustafa come to identify himself with his given name, “meat”?

17. How does the book investigate the boundary between what is real and what is unreal? Does war make this boundary less stable? Ismet asks in
his diary, “How is it that I can exist in both the past and the present simultaneously, be both body and soul simultaneously, live both reality and
fantasy simultaneously?” (p. 40). Does Ismet ever make peace with this sense of doubleness?
18. In what ways does the book’s form mirror its content? What are some examples of the splintering, and examples of reassembling as they
appear within the novel? How are these processes embodied by the novel’s structure itself ?

19. Eric plays Tom Waits for Ismet on his birthday, and he writes in his diary, “It was then, mati, that love was born in Izzy for America, for its
sadness and madness, for its naivete and wisdom, for its vastness, its innumerable nooks where a person can disappear” (p. 43). Are your own
feelings of affection for particular countries influenced by those countries’ artistic contributions? For what reason does Ismet say he wishes Lendo
had allowed his theater troupe to travel to Scotland (p. 175)?

20. How do you interpret the epigraph from Samuel Beckett that precedes Notebook Two (p. 311)? How might wanting a story for oneself be a
mistake? Ismet writes in his diary, “One thing about forcing a life into a story is that you become a character and when the story ends you do, too’
(p. 339). What role does storytelling play in your understanding of your own life? Is there a way in which you feel as though you become a
character when you narrate your experiences to others?

21. Ismet flirts with suicide by closing his eyes on the highway but he always opens them, which he interprets as “a conditioned response, this
choosing life; I do it out of habit” (p. 342). Why does he feel betrayed by his survival instinct in America when he has shown so much bravery
and ingenuity in getting himself there? How does this square with his preoccupation with the meaninglessness and absurdity of life (existentialist
themes shared by artists who interest him, like Beckett, Dostoyevsky, Tarkovsky)?

22. How do you interpret the novel’s ending? Do you believe that Ismet actually killed himself, or is that left ambiguous? Consider the ending in
relation to the scene where Ismet goes to visit Mustafa Nalic’s alleged grave back in Bosnia. How might these two scenes resonate, reinforce, or
even undermine one another?

23. When Asya and Ismet encounter the Great Dane, Ismet reconstructs the dog’s life story (pp. 154-156). Has he had a sort of mystical vision,
like the ones his mother has, or is this just his wild imagination? Given that the name “Archibald” comes to him and saves them from danger, is
an argument being made here for vision/imagination as life-saving?

24. Throughout the book, Ismet experiences a split between his body and mind, wherein he is able to look at himself with detachment, as though
he were looking at another person. What triggers these experiences? (p. 17, pp. 190-191, pp. 258-259.) Have you ever experienced something like
them?

Suggestions for further reading:

Sarajevo Blues by Semezdin Mehmedinovic; Nowhere Man by Aleksandar Hemon; Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergovic; The Bridge on the
Drina by Ivo Andric; The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugresic; Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia, edited by Chris Agee; How
the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Sa]a Stani]ic; Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi; What Is the What by Dave Eggers; Dancing Arabs by Sayed
Kashua, Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995 by Joe Sacco; Then They Started Shooting: Growing Up in Wartime Bosnia by
Lynne Jones; Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West by David Rieff; Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War by Peter Maass; Café Europa: Life
After Communism by Slavenka Drakulic

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