Awards
2006 Winner New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age
Synopses & Reviews
The universally respected NPR journalist and bestselling memoirist Scott Simon makes a dazzling fiction debut. In
Pretty Birds, Simon creates an intense, startling, and tragicomic portrait of a classic character a young woman in the besieged city of Sarajevo in the early 1990s.
In the spring of 1992, Irena Zaric is a star on her Sarajevo high school basketball team, a tough, funny teenager who has taught her parrot, Pretty Bird, to do a decent imitation of a ball hitting a hoop. Irena wears her hair short like k. d. lang's, and she loves Madonna, Michael Jordan, and Johnny Depp. But while Irena rocks out and shoots baskets with her friends, her beloved city has become a battleground. When the violence and terror of "ethnic cleansing" against Muslims begins, Irena and her family, brutalized by Serb soldiers, flee for safety across the river that divides the city.
If once Irena knew of war only from movies and history books, now she knows its reality. She steals from the dead to buy food. She scuttles under windows in her own home to dodge bullets. She risks her life to communicate with an old Serb school friend and teammate. Even Pretty Bird has started to mimic the sizzle of mortar fire.
In a city starved for work, a former assistant principal offers Irena a vague job, "duties as assigned," which she accepts. She begins by sweeping floors, but soon, under the tutelage of a cast of rogues and heroes, she learns to be a sniper, biding her time, never returning to the same perch, and searching her targets for the "mist" that marks a successful shot. Ultimately, Irena's new vocation will lead to complex and cataclysmic consequences for herself and those she loves.
As a journalist, Scott Simon covered the siege of Sarajevo. Here, in a novel as suspenseful as a John le Carré thriller, he re-creates the atmosphere of that place and time and the pain and dark humor of its people. Pretty Birds is a bold departure, and the auspicious beginning of yet another brilliant career for its author.
Review
"[T]his extraordinary debut illuminates a time and place where civilians fought back....A magnificent tribute, not just to the Sarajevans whose siege Simon reported, but to the indestructible human spirit." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Simon, who has covered the siege of Sarajevo for NPR, puts the events in a war-torn land into human perspective with memorable characters struggling with issues of ethnicity, survival, friendship, and betrayal." Booklist
Review
"It is no insult to Simon's novelistic skill to say that his book's excellence rests finally on his reporter's eye and ear....Simon's novel is a fine tribute to the heroes and victims who were his friends [in Sarajevo]." The Washington Post
Review
"Pretty Birds...is an example of what can go right when a journalist turns novelist. Simon...loads the book with a specificity that comes from a seasoned reportorial eye....[A] riveting and heartbreaking tale." Christian Science Monitor
Review
"The author, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, has worked as a war correspondent in Sarajevo, and it shows in the authentic, gritty details....Highly recommended." Library Journal
Review
"[A]n honest story of people in crisis, a tribute to the human spirit that flourishes in the grimmest soil, and...simply one of the best war novels of our time." San Antonio Express-News
Review
"[A]n important document describing a specific time and place....Simon's novel is a cliffhanger, a deeply moving rebuke of war and a heartbreaking tale about the bonds of friendship." The Oregonian (Portland, OR)
Review
"At times Pretty Birds lacks a sense of the otherness of a foreign culture with its own references and modes of thought. Sometimes the sensibility just feels American." Chicago Tribune
Synopsis
The universally respected NPR journalist and bestselling memoirist Scott Simon makes a dazzling fiction debut. In
Pretty Birds, Simon creates an intense, startling, and tragicomic portrait of a classic character-a young woman in the besieged city of Sarajevo in the early 1990s.
In the spring of 1992, Irena Zaric is a star on her Sarajevo high school basketball team, a tough, funny teenager who has taught her parrot, Pretty Bird, to do a decent imitation of a ball hitting a hoop. Irena wears her hair short like k. d. lang's, and she loves Madonna, Michael Jordan, and Johnny Depp. But while Irena rocks out and shoots baskets with her friends, her beloved city has become a battleground. When the violence and terror of "ethnic cleansing" against Muslims begins, Irena and her family, brutalized by Serb soldiers, flee for safety across the river that divides the city.
If once Irena knew of war only from movies and history books, now she knows its reality. She steals from the dead to buy food. She scuttles under windows in her own home to dodge bullets. She risks her life to communicate with an old Serb school friend and teammate. Even Pretty Bird has started to mimic the sizzle of mortar fire.
In a city starved for work, a former assistant principal offers Irena a vague job, "duties as assigned," which she accepts. She begins by sweeping floors, but soon, under the tutelage of a cast of rogues and heroes, she learns to be a sniper, biding her time, never returning to the same perch, and searching her targets for the "mist" that marks a successful shot. Ultimately, Irena's new vocation will lead to complex and cataclysmic consequences for herself and those she loves.
As a journalist, Scott Simon covered the siege of Sarajevo. Here, in a novel as suspenseful as a John le Carre thriller, he re-creates the atmosphere of that place and time and the pain and dark humor of its people. Pretty Birds is a bold departure, and the auspicious beginning of yet another brilliant career for its author.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
This mortal chess game of guile and manipulation plays out against the backdrop of beautiful, war-torn Sarajevo as two high school friends one Muslim, one Christian struggle to survive the Serbs' ethnic cleansing.
About the Author
Scott Simon is the host of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition with Scott Simon. He has covered ten wars, from El Salvador to Iraq, and has won every major award in broadcasting, including the Peabody and the Emmy. His memoir, Home and Away, rose to the top of the Los Angeles Times nonfiction bestseller list. His second book, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, was named Barnes & Noble's Sports Book of the Year. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.