Under A Croatian Sun
Under A Croatian Sun

Author: Anthony Stancomb

Publisher: Kings Road Publishing

Published: 2014-06-05

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 178219911X

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Many of us have dreamed about upping sticks, leaving the humdrum of urban living for a new life of blue skies, warm sunshine and sparkling seas. For Anthony and Ivana Stancomb, moving from Fulham to Vis was an easy decision. But fitting in with the locals was one of the hardest things they have ever had to do. Under a Croatian Sun takes the reader on a journey from Grey Britain to a ramshackle village in Croatia - a village proudly defined by its tragic history, its unique cafe culture, its fishing industry and its potent alcohol. Faced with a language barrier and not the friendliest of locals, little by little our undaunted couple become islanders in their own right, and melt a few hearts in the process. With the Adriatic Sea as a backdrop, we trace their transformation from foreigners to friends, taking in their adventures on the water, fierce grandmothers, star-cross'd lovers and the establishment of the island's first ever cricket team. This heartwarming accounts of following your heart and not your head, shows how, with a bit of courage and an open mind, home is wherever you make it.

Running Away to Home
Running Away to Home

Author: Jennifer Wilson

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2011-10-11

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1429989084

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A middle class, Midwestern family in search of meaning uproot themselves and move to their ancestral village in Croatia. "We can look at this in two ways," Jim wrote, always the pragmatist. "We can panic and scrap the whole idea. Or we can take this as a sign. They're saying the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. Maybe this is the kick in the pants we needed to do something completely different. There will always be an excuse not to go..." And that, friends, is how a typically sane middle-aged mother decided to drag her family back to a forlorn mountain village in the backwoods of Croatia. So begins author Jennifer Wilson's journey in Running Away to Home. Jen, her architect husband, Jim, and their two children had been living the typical soccer- and ballet-practice life in the most Middle American of places: Des Moines, Iowa. They overindulged themselves and their kids, and as a family they were losing one another in the rush of work, school, and activities. One day, Jen and her husband looked at each other–both holding their Starbucks coffee as they headed out to their SUV in the mall parking lot, while the kids complained about the inferiority of the toys they just got–and asked themselves: "Is this the American dream? Because if it is, it sort of sucks." Jim and Jen had always dreamed of taking a family sabbatical in another country, so when they lost half their savings in the stock-market crash, it seemed like just a crazy enough time to do it. High on wanderlust, they left the troubled landscape of contemporary America for the Croatian mountain village of Mrkopalj, the land of Jennifer's ancestors. It was a village that seemed hermetically sealed for the last one hundred years, with a population of eight hundred (mostly drunken) residents and a herd of sheep milling around the post office. For several months they lived like locals, from milking the neighbor's cows to eating roasted pig on a spit to desperately seeking the village recipe for bootleg liquor. As the Wilson-Hoff family struggled to stay sane (and warm), what they found was much deeper and bigger than themselves.

Under a Croatian Sun
Under a Croatian Sun

Author: Anthony Stancomb

Publisher: Lume Books

Published: 2020-10-29

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781839012501

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UNDER A CROATIAN SUN takes the reader on a journey from the grey concrete of London to a ramshackle village in Croatia. This warming account of following your heart shows how, with a bit of courage and an open mind, home is wherever you make it.

Notes From A Very Small Island
Notes From A Very Small Island

Author: Anthony Stancomb

Publisher: Lume Books

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9781839012495

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Notes From a Very Small Island is the follow-up to the bestselling Under a Croatian Sun, which tells the story of a couple upping sticks and leaving their humdrum life in London for blue skies and café life on an island in Croatia.

Under the Tuscan Sun
Under the Tuscan Sun

Author: Frances Mayes

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2003-08-26

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0767917456

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved memoir of self-discovery set against the spectacular Tuscan countryside that inspired the major motion picture starring Diane Lane—now in a twentieth-anniversary edition featuring a new afterword “This beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy, loving a house and, always, the pleasures of food, would make a perfect gift for a loved one. But it’s so delicious, read it first yourself.”—USA Today For more Frances Mayes, including a tour of her now iconic Cortona home, Bramasole, watch PBS’s Dream of Italy: Tuscan Sun Special! More than twenty years ago, Frances Mayes—widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer—introduced readers to a wondrous new world when she bought and restored an abandoned Tuscan villa called Bramasole. Under the Tuscan Sun inspired generations to embark on their own journeys—whether that be flying to a foreign country in search of themselves, savoring one of the book’s dozens of delicious seasonal recipes, or simply being transported by Mayes’s signature evocative, sensory language. Now with a new afterword from Frances Mayes, the twentieth-anniversary edition of Under the Tuscan Sun revisits the book’s most popular characters.

Author:

Publisher: Youguide International BV

Published:

Total Pages: 103

ISBN-13:

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The Hired Man
The Hired Man

Author: Aminatta Forna

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-03-28

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1408818779

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A powerful novel about the indelible effects of war and the memories which stir beneath the silence of a quiet Croatian town, from Orange Prize-shortlisted and Commonwealth Writers' Prize-winning author Aminatta Forna 'Supremely masterful' INDEPENDENT 'The Hired Man seals her reputation as arguably the best writer of fiction in this field' EVENING STANDARD 'Terrific skill and insight' DAILY MAIL Gost is surrounded by mountains and fields of wild flowers. The summer sun burns. The Croatian winter brings freezing winds. Beyond the boundaries of the town an old house which has lain empty for years is showing signs of life. One of the windows, glass darkened with dirt, today stands open, and the lively chatter of English voices carries across the fallow fields. Laura and her teenage children have arrived. A short distance away lies the hut of Duro Kolak, who lives alone with his two hunting dogs. As he helps Laura with repairs to the old house, they uncover a mosaic beneath the ruined plaster and, in the rising heat of summer, painstakingly restore it. But Gost is not all it seems; conflicts long past still suppurate beneath the scars.

Girl at War
Girl at War

Author: Sara Novic

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2016-03-22

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0812986393

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For readers of The Tiger’s Wife and All the Light We Cannot See comes a powerful debut novel about a girl’s coming of age—and how her sense of family, friendship, love, and belonging is profoundly shaped by war. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BOOKPAGE, BOOKLIST, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE • ALEX AWARD WINNER • LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST • LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION Zagreb, 1991. Ana Jurić is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a small apartment in Croatia’s capital. But that year, civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering Ana’s idyllic childhood. Daily life is altered by food rations and air raid drills, and soccer matches are replaced by sniper fire. Neighbors grow suspicious of one another, and Ana’s sense of safety starts to fray. When the war arrives at her doorstep, Ana must find her way in a dangerous world. New York, 2001. Ana is now a college student in Manhattan. Though she’s tried to move on from her past, she can’t escape her memories of war—secrets she keeps even from those closest to her. Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, Ana returns to Croatia after a decade away, hoping to make peace with the place she once called home. As she faces her ghosts, she must come to terms with her country’s difficult history and the events that interrupted her childhood years before. Moving back and forth through time, Girl at War is an honest, generous, brilliantly written novel that illuminates how history shapes the individual. Sara Nović fearlessly shows the impact of war on one young girl—and its legacy on all of us. It’s a debut by a writer who has stared into recent history to find a story that continues to resonate today. Praise for Girl at War “Outstanding . . . Girl at War performs the miracle of making the stories of broken lives in a distant country feel as large and universal as myth.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice) “[An] old-fashioned page-turner that will demand all of the reader’s attention, happily given. A debut novel that astonishes.”—Vanity Fair “Shattering . . . The book begins with what deserves to become one of contemporary literature’s more memorable opening lines. The sentences that follow are equally as lyrical as a folk lament and as taut as metal wire wrapped through an electrified fence.”—USA Today

Under the Sun
Under the Sun

Author: Arthur Dorros

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Chronicles the harrowing journey of Ehmet, a thirteen-year-old boy from Sarajevo who gets caught up in the ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.

Catch the Rabbit
Catch the Rabbit

Author: Lana Bastašic

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 2021-05-27

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1529039630

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‘Two young women plunging into post-war Bosnia like two Alices into Wonderland . . . smart, energetic, passionate, announcing a major talent.’ - Aleksandar Hemon Sara hasn’t seen or heard from her childhood best friend, Lejla, in years. She’s comfortable with her life in Dublin, with her partner, their avocado plant, and their naturist neighbour. But when Lejla calls her and demands she come home to Bosnia, Sara finds that she can’t say no. What begins as a road trip becomes a journey through the past, as the two women set off to find Armin, Lejla’s brother who disappeared towards the end of the Bosnian War. Presumed dead by everyone else, only Lejla and Sara believed Armin was still alive. Confronted with the limits of memory, Sara is forced to reconsider the things she thought she understood as a girl: the best friend she loved, the first experiences they shared, but also the social and religious lines that separated them, that brought them such different lives. Translated into English by author Lana Bastašic, Catch the Rabbit tells the story of how we place the ones we love on pedestals, and then wait for them to fall off, how loss marks us indelibly, and how the traumas of war echo down the years.