Newcomers Book One [Paperback]

The first volume of this three-part autobiographical series begins in 1938 with the expulsion of the Kovacic family from their home of Switzerland, eventually leading to their settlement in the father's home country of Slovenia. Narrated by Kovacic as a ten-year-old boy, he describes his family's journey with uncanny naiveté. Before leaving their home, he imagines his father's home country as something beautiful out of a fairytale, but as they make their way toward exile, he and his family realize that any attempt to make a home in Slovenia will be in vain. Confronted by misery, hunger, and hostility, the young boy refuses to learn Slovenian and falls silent, his surroundings becoming a social, cultural and mental abyss. 

Kovačič meticulously, boldly, and sincerely portrays the objective, everyday world; the style is clear and direct. Told from the point of view of a child, one memory is interrupted by fragments and visions of another. Some are innocent and tender, while others are miserable and ruthless, resulting in a profound and heart-wrenching description of a period torn apart by conflict, reflected in the author's powerful and innovative command of language.Kovačič voted the outstanding Slovene novelist of the past twenty-five years

LikeKarl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle andElena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, Newcomers is a European saga ... that begins with the author’s youth and creeps outward, describing life with a rare acuity that not only captures both its dramas and banalities, but also considers them with equal significance. Newcomers is an emblem of what memory — personal memory, political memory, a place’s memory — can create from erasure... [C]uriously hypnotic.  --Los Angeles Review of Books

A powerful chronicle of conflict and upheaval within both a falˆ