Review by Maud Newton in Newsday for Sarajevo Marlboro
Miljenko Jergovic’s “Sarajevo Marlboro” (Archipelago Books) relies on minute details, such as a dead cactus and a grandmother’s ring, to distinguish individuals’ numbed reactions to the devastation of the Bosnian war. There’s a melancholy, dreamlike sameness to Jergovic’s war stories that recalls Alan Lightman’s use of time in “Einstein’s Dreams” and Italo Calvino’s meditations on place in “Invisible Cities,” but Jergovic’s book is the strongest of the three.