Where You Come From
  • Published: 4 November 2021
  • ISBN: 9781473581982
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368

Where You Come From

Winner of the German Book Prize

Formats & editions
EBook
4 Nov 2021
Tr. Paperback
2 Nov 2021
Hardback
2 Jan 2022
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A powerful exploration of identity and belonging, Where You Come From is the major new novel from internationally acclaimed and bestselling author Saša Stanišic, published for the first time by Jonathan Cape

A powerful exploration of identity and belonging, Where You Come From is the major new novel from internationally acclaimed and bestselling author Saša Stanišic

Saša Stanišic's Where You Come From is a novel about a village where only thirteen people remain, a country that no longer exists, a shattered family that is his own. Blending autofiction, fable, and choose-your-own-adventure, Stanišic traces a family's escape during the conflict in Yugoslavia, and the years that followed as they built a life in Germany. As he explores what it means to be European today, he examines how it feels to learn a new language, to find new friends and new jobs, and to build an identity between countries and cultures.


Translated by Damion Searls, Where You Come From is about homelands, both remembered and imagined. A book that bends form and genre with wit, heart, and exceptional craftsmanship to explore questions that lie inside all of us: about language and shame, about arrival and making it just in time, about luck and death, about what role our origins and memories play in our lives.

'Wonderfully inventive and impressive.' - Guardian
  • Published: 4 November 2021
  • ISBN: 9781473581982
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368
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Praise for Where You Come From

A triumph, funny and touching and subtly profound... it builds a momentum that dazzles throughout. An exhilarating and powerful read.

Jennifer Croft

Stanišic is a poet and revolutionary who has found his true home in language.

Rolling Stone

Wonderfully inventive and impressive.

Guardian

Offensively gifted... Some kind of freak genius.

Irish Examiner

Stanišic is an exceptionally talented, impish and caring writer who has walked the edge of the abyss.

LA Times

It is easy to say that a book is important; this one - especially now, especially here - is of great importance.

Die Welt

[A] brilliant novel... wonderfully alive, vital in its depiction of family life... The book's conclusion...is a bravura, sustained and singular piece of writing that bursts with wit, heart and empathy... all of which land deftly in Damion Searl's excellent translation.

Stuart Evers, Observer

Where You Come From...is most powerful in its gentle undoing of what learning a new dialect might seem... Stanìšic's prose is calm, persuasively so.

Elliot Hoste, New Statesman