“I was born on 7 March 1978 in Višegrad on the river Drina. In the days before I was born, it had been raining non-stop. March is the most hated month in Višegrad, it is mournful and dangerous.“ This is the gloomy beginning of Herkunft (2019), in which Saša Stanišić narrates the story “of my homes, both remembered and invented” – a phrase taken from the cover text of the book, which is classified as neither an autobiography nor a novel and leans towards one or other without setting a boundary between them.

When Stanišić was 14, war broke out in Bosnia and he fled across Serbia, Hungary and Croatia to Germany. He and his mother reached Heidelberg in August 1992; his father followed six months later. “Every home is a coincidence,” he writes in Herkunft. “Happiness is being able to influence it. When you leave your home because you want to and not because you must. […] Our stay was meant to be a temporary escape from the real unreality of war.” But Stanišić stayed, learnt German, obtained his university matriculation qualification, studied German, Slavic studies and creative writing. His début novel, Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert (2006; english How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, 2008), in which he writes about the war in Bosnia, was shortlisted for the German Book Prize. His second novel, Vor dem Fest (english Before the Feast, 2015) was published in 2014 and was quickly followed by Fallensteller (2016) and Herkunft (2019). In autumn 2019, he was awarded the German Book Prize for Herkunft.

Further literature:
Reich, Annika und Muzur, Lina (Hg.): Das Herz verlässt keinen Ort, an dem es hängt: Weiter Schreiben – Literarische Begegnungen mit Autorinnen und Autoren aus Krisengebieten. Berlin: Ullstein 2018.
Hardtke, Thomas, Kleine, Johannes und Payne, Charlton (Hg.): Niemandsbuchten und Schutzbefohlene. Flucht-Räume und Flüchtlingsfiguren in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Unipress 2017.
Jügler, Matthias (Hg.): Wie wir leben wollen: Texte für Solidarität und Freiheit. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2016.

Selected works:
Herkunft (2019)
Fallensteller (Erzählungen, 2016)
Vor dem Fest (Roman, 2014)
Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert (Roman, 2006)