Heritage of Smoke

The characters in Novakovich’s excellent stories tend to be in extremis: people in the midst of war, or refugees escaping it, or veterans trying to forget it. His muscular prose and remarkable sense of place and history (both recent and somewhat distant) make for thrilling reading. What’s more surprising and impressive is the breadth of territory covered here. One story is set in Hungary in the 1950s; another follows a Dutchman named Martin Neeskens who worked for the U.N. during the Bosnian conflicts in the 1990s but now lives in New York. Another, set on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, involves a clutch of international roommates, including two Russian émigrés, crammed into an apartment. Themes overlap, but each story presents its own unique world. In the title story, Jovan, a refugee from Croatia now living in Belgrade, reconnects with an old friend named Danko. The very act of mentally reopening that door is complex—painful and confusing and grotesquely humorous, but above all inescapable. “Smoke is the flavor of our memories,” Jovan says. Novakovich’s evocative stories leave echoes after reading. (Jan.)