A comic novel of war from a teenagers pointofviewPublished as the siege of Sarajevo ended <strong>Lodgers</strong> is a hilarious unsentimentalreport from the f... » 

A comic novel of war from a teenagers pointofviewPublished as the siege of Sarajevo ended Lodgers is a hilarious unsentimentalreport from the front lines of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Detergent mixedwith flour museum relics sold to U.N. peacekeepers the magic power oflaminated accreditationall of the folly and the horror of that time arerevealed in the sarcastic report of the novels teenage wouldbe authoress.Maja lives in the basement of a Sarajevo museum enduring with equal annoyanceSerb artillery and vegetarian meals that taste like fried sponge. Her fatherthe museum director zealously guards the treasures upstairs while their agedcolodger Julio plots to trade them away. Majas mother copes with yoga whiledour stepbrother Davor endures the endless crying and cravings of his pregnantwife. Floating amidst it all is Majas grandmother blind and deaf yet drawnto any conversation involving food.Need and crisis propel Maja and her companions from one humorous situation toanother. Yet her pitchperfect gallows humor makes it clear that thebrutalities of war penetrate these small moments of lifeand even the selfcenteredness of a teenaged girl. A best seller in the Balkans and widelytranslated in Europe Lodgers is an uncompromising novel about a moderntragedy. «