Unspeakable Home
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From award-winning writer Ismet Prcic, a “brutal and tender and beautiful” (Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars) novel that is “part existential cry…part anguished confession…a transfiguring of personal memory to obscure the terrible cost of exile” (The New York Times).
Having fled his war-torn hometown of Tuzla as a teenager, our narrator, Izzy, found love and a measure of stability in California with his beloved. But his American marriage couldn’t survive his Bosnian brokenness, the trauma so entrenched and insidious that it became impossible to communicate to anyone outside of himself—even the person he loved most. Now, as he writes in the first of many courageously candid fan letters to the comedian Bill Burr, he knows he must try.
“An adventurous novel that meshes a fragmented narrative with a broken soul” (Kirkus Reviews), Unspeakable Home takes us through Izzy’s memories and confessions as he reflects on his bomb-ravaged childhood, the implosion of his relationships, and an agonizing battle with alcoholism. As multiple narrators surface in fragments with increasingly tenuous connections to reality, Prcic unearths the psychological cost of exile and shame with a roving, kinetic energy and a sharp, searching sense of humor.
What emerges is a vivid and poignant exploration of the stories we create to hide the deepest parts of our identity from ourselves, as well as a hard-won, life-affirming promise of redemption.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A middle-aged immigrant sorts through his memories of the Bosnian War and his present-day romantic woes in this clever and moving work of autofiction from Prcic (Shards). Izzy Prcic lives out of his car in Salem, Ore., where he drinks heavily and writes confessional and often self-deprecating fan emails to comedian Bill Burr. Interspersed with the letters are short stories written by Izzy and narrated by characters who, as Izzy explains in his letters to Burr, represent different versions of himself ("every chunk a snapshot of a particular brokenness"). In "Slouching Toward Pichka Materina," the narrator recalls how he escaped the war's privation by huffing paint with the other punk rock kids. The 17-year-old narrator of "Bosnian Dream" struggles to assimilate to life in the U.S., where his uncle advises him to cold-call DreamWorks for a job rather than go to college. In "Teletovič Grills Lamb, Defensively," set in the present, the narrator tries to connect with his American-born son through playing a violent video game. Prcic adeptly portrays his characters' shaky lives and painful pasts, and the blend of autobiography and metafiction evokes Izzy's disorientation. Prcic's impressive talents are on full display.
