How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Saša Stanišić is the German Book Office's book selection for March. Translated by Anthea Bell, the book will be published in June by Grove Press ($24, 9780802118660/0802118666).

Saša Stanišić was born in Visegrad in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1978. At the age of 14, he fled to Germany with his family to escape the Yugoslavian civil war. How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone is his first novel and was nominated for the German Book Prize in 2006. Stanišić will participate in the PEN World Voices Festival in New York City, April 28-May 2.

The GBO described the book this way: "Aleksandar Krsmanović grows up in Višegrad, a small town in Bosnia. He has inherited a talent for imaginative story-telling from his grandfather, and through these stories, Aleksandar infuses his world with a fairy tale-like vibrancy and childhood innocence. Suddenly this idyllic world disintegrates into violence and bloodshed as civil war grips the country. Aleks and his parents flee to Germany, where Aleks' story-telling plays a vital role for him and his family. He is able to keep alive the happiness they knew before the war and to stave off the difficulties of assimilation. Gradually Aleksandar begins to crave a deeper understanding of what really happened in his country and what forced his family from their home. His fantasies collide with reality, and Aleks must decide where to end his stories and let reality into his life. How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone is an accomplished, tragic-comic tale that magnificently captures the space between fantasy and reality."