Battle Songs

This innovative collection from Drndić (Doppelgänger) was originally published in Croatia in 2019, a year after the author’s death. The five linked stories center on single mother Tea Radan and her daughter, Sara, who leave a crumbling Yugoslavia in the early 1990s for Toronto. Throughout, Drndić juxtaposes seemingly disparate subjects to make emphatic statements about the wartime struggles of Croatians, both refugees in 1990s Canada and those who confronted the Nazis during WWII. In “Little Unfinished Story,” a history of the domestication of pigs is interlaced with refugees’ accounts of their means of survival, such as a classical musician who sells toys door-to-door. In “Hitler Liked Quail and Father Christmas Abandons Bosnia,” Tea works a temp job stuffing envelopes. Here, and elsewhere, the author demonstrates how the characters fill their time with trivial tasks after consequential upheaval. In “Oh, Donna Clara,” Drndić draws a parallel between Sara’s adoption of a cat in Canada and Sara’s aunt Lena adopting a daughter in 1980s Yugoslavia. Though a bit too much genealogical minutiae bogs down the lengthy centerpiece, “Glasshouses and Gallstones,” it otherwise offers an engaging tale of Tea’s struggles in Canada, her ancestors’ interactions with the Ustasha during the 1940s, and the Nazis’ Potemkin village at Terezin. The author’s distinctive style makes these refugee stories sing. (Feb.)