From Nowhere to Nowhere

Bekim Sejranovic's From Nowhere to Nowhere is a subtle yet unforgettable meditation on the factors that shape identity. Raised by his grandparents and scattered to the wind from his hometown of Brcko, Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, the novel's unnamed narrator travels to Croatia and Norway, trying to reclaim a sense of self he isn't sure he ever possessed in the first place. From his days playing soccer with friends on Brotherhood and Unity Street outside his home to Muslim funerals, his job as an interpreter for Balkan refugees, and his fractious relationships with women, a nomadic aesthetic emerges brilliantly rendering what it means to live a life from which you have always been removed.

Funny, melancholy and riotously alive, From Nowhere to Nowhere is a raw mosaic of intoxicated states and landscapes, a nonconformist's dream book of brilliant and bruising hopes.

James Hopkin