They Are Trying to Break Your Heart

Savill’s immersive debut brings together the Bosnian War of the 1990s and the 2004 Thai tsunami in an enthralling story about destruction and justice. In 2004, Anya is working for a human rights organization in London. Although her organization has shifted its focus from human rights abuses to returning refugees displaced during the Bosnian war, Anya can’t stop thinking about a rape of a Bosnian woman by soldiers during the war that was never investigated. Concurrently in Cambridge, Marko, a Bosnian immigrant, is haunted by the same incident and wonders whether his close friend, Kemal, really was guilty of participating in the rape. While investigating those involved in the incident, Anya hears that Kemal may not be dead, as previously reported, but instead living in a resort in Thailand. Combining work with pleasure, she travels to the resort for Christmas 2004 with William, her ex-boyfriend, in hopes of rekindling their romance. Early on, the story flashes back to the ’90s in Bosnia, revealing the childhoods of Marko, Kemal, and their friends, and also moves forward to post-tsunami 2005: William is mourning Anya, who died in the tsunami, and Marko is back in Bosnia for Kemal’s funeral. This intricate story weaves together disparate threads, jumping among times and locations in a hopscotch that builds suspense toward the revelation of what actually happened in Bosnia. By wedding together multiple story lines into a chaotic, satisfying whole, Savill skillfully depicts the aid workers, perpetrators, victims, and survivors involved in two blurry moments of international crisis. (Dec.)