When World War One comes, Jozef joins his adopted brother as a sharpshooter in the Kaiser's army, surviving a perilous trek across the frozen Italian Alps and capture by a victorious enemy.Ī stirring tale of brotherhood, coming-of-age, and survival, that was inspired by the author's own family history, this novel evokes a time when Czechs, Slovaks, Austrians, and Germans fought on the same side while divided by language, ethnicity, and social class in the most brutal war to date. The Sojourn is the story of Jozef Vinich, who was uprooted from a 19th-century mining town in Colorado by a family tragedy and returns with his father to an impoverished shepherd's life in rural Austria-Hungary. Rather, it looks deeply into its characters' lives with wisdom and humanity, and, in doing so, helps us experience a distant past that feels as if it could be our own." - National Book Award judges' citation
The Sojourn, about a war and a family and coming-of-age, does not present a single false moment of sentimental creation. "Some writers are good at drawing a literary curtain over reality, and then there are writers who raise the veil and lead us to see for the first time.
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