Josip Novakovich is a great writer. The stories in Salvation and Other Disasters are not always easy to read, with the histories of the wars in the Balkans, including World War II and the wars following the break-up of Yugoslavia, serving as backdrop. But Novakovich uses humor and realism and even some elements of fantasy to create wonderful stories. His stories are always moving because of the immediacy–the enervating realness — of the people and the situations of his stories. He blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction; his writing comes from his own life and from lives into which he’s been offered glimpses (and also deeper secrets) and he writes without flinching about the truths of life, the beauty and the ugliness, the moments of sweetness and the much less-than-sweet agonies. His fiction, while wildly imaginative, is more real than the most “non” of the non-fiction.

I once attended a lecture on creative writing given by Novakovich and he advised his audience of aspiring writers to take a truism, a cliche, a fact or saying and turn it on its head, and to use that turning-place as a starting point for writing. Novakovich throughout his stories creates shifts in reality, he twists around our preconceptions about things and our settled ideas and makes us look again. He moves the earth just a fraction and we see things differently. The world is illuminated, it is fresh and it is provoking, it is horrible and yet it is desirable.

The stories that make up Salvation and Other Disasters could have been a novel, a novel about a mixed-up family from the mixed-up countries that used to make up the created nation of Yugoslavia. This family has its members who emigrate to America and those who stay behind; a grandfather who fought in World War II, tossed from side to side and army to army; the farm cousins who survive under Tito; and the disparate brothers who get caught up in the war between neighbors that was the war of a disintegrated Yugoslavia, including the brother (uncle, son, cousin) who tries to escape its aftermath but the U.S. immigration judge does not understand –and we do, for having read the story “Rye Harvest”. Certain of the stories from this collection Novakovich later incorporated into his grim but spry and beautiful picaresque novel, April Fool’s Day (which has one of the most powerful death scenes I’ve ever read).

Reading Novakovich’s work makes me believe that in many ways it must be hell to be a good writer. Writing good fiction is a constant baring of the soul, if not your own, someone else’s then, and you still have to face the public flailing. Novakovich’s work is more confessional than the most vigorous teenage blogging, a baring of self to allow us to see more clearly. What a generous gift! And such generosity plays (and as grim as his situations are, Novakovich is very playful) throughout his writings. His book of essays, Plum Brandy, are as good as his stories, and both share the grounding of truth. Novakovich builds on that truth using his careening imagination to write moral fables, solid (and sordid) political histories, and best of all, really great stories.