The unflinching story of a boy who survives the siege of Sarajevo and immigrates to Toronto bearing the scars of war

It's Spring of 1992. Jevrem Andric is eleven years old, and brutal civil war is erupting in Sarajevo. At first it's just boring, as kids shut in apartments run out of ways to entertain themselves. A few weeks later, boredom is a luxury. Hell has arrived. They are trapped and face starvation and death. Jevrem's only comfort is his beloved grandmother, a tough World War II partisan who has seen everything there is to see in war. Five years later, what's left of his family has immigrated to Toronto, where spring feels like mid-winter, his grandmother is broken and ill, and sixteen-year-old Jevrem is on a rampage, drinking, doing drugs and breaking into houses with his small gang of Yugoslav friends.

When his grandmother dies, he faces a moral reckoning that compels him to try, in his own warped way, to do some good in the world—the consequences be damned. Rudolph's voice is searing, tender and at times hallucinatory as she creates a brilliant portrait of a boy's fight for emotional survival and a family's attempt to find peace in a new land.

KATJA RUDOLPH was born in England to German parents, and she immigrated to Canada with her family in 1973. She holds an MPhil from King's College, Cambridge, in social and political science, and a PhD from the University of Toronto in theory and policy studies. She has worked as a magazine editor and a graphic designer, and she is working on her third novel. She currently lives near Toronto with her partner and young daughter.

WEB: KATJARUDOLPH.COM

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• OLA Evergreen Award