Pretty Birds

In the spring of 1992, Irena Zaric is a star on her 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 Sarajevo becomes a battleground. When the violence and terror of 'ethnic-cleansing' against Muslims begin, Irena and her family, brutalized by Serb soldiers, flee for safety across the river that divides the city. In a city starved for work, a former assistant principal offers Irena a vague job, 'duties as assigned.' She begins by sweeping floors, but soon, under the tutelage of a cast of rogues and heroes, she becomes a sniper - learning to bide her time, to never return to the same perch, to identify the 'mist' around the target 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.