"A youth between blue helmets and Bon Jovi. Tijan Sila tells his story in a raw, vulnerable, unvarnished way." -Micky Beisenherz
“Sila writes with an approachable and impressive precision.” - Anna Ruhland, Tagesspiege
“An incredibly good book, touching on every page.” Jagoda Marinić, ZDF Literarisches Quartett
“This book shocked me so much that for the first time in a long time I cried at the end. That's not a literary category, but it perhaps shows a little bit what books can do to us if we really get involved with them. Highly recommended reading.” Nicola Steiner, SWR lesenswert Quartett
“'Radio Sarajevo' is carried by a very unique linguistic coolness. … A story of violence and friendship and, incidentally, a little sociology of Yugoslav society.” Tobias Rapp, Spiegel
He describes life and survival in besieged Sarajevo with brutal honesty.
“This is the story of my childhood and my war.” When the war began in April 1992, Tijan Sila was only ten years old, but to this day he can remember the smell of detonated explosives. While Sarajevo was in flames, the boy he was then became a young man. He roamed the ruins of the bombed-out city and collected things left behind by those who fled and died to trade for food on the black market. He learned how to survive and accepted the cruel new normal, but at what price?
His story is a story of the unexpected. It tells of how poets become murderers and murderers become heroes. It tells of people whose humanity has been abruptly stripped away, and of the splinters that war leaves in the brain of every survivor.
