“Ismet Prcic’s brilliant, provocative, and
propulsively energetic debut 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 make peace with the corrosive guilt he harbors
over leaving behind his family behind, he must “write everything.” The result
is a great rattlebag 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. 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 inventive coming of age, and a
heartbreaking saga of a splintered family.”
