Ivan Dolinar is born in Tito`s Yugoslavia on April Fool`s Day, 1948 -- the auspicious beginning of a life that will be derailed by backfiring good intentions in a world of propaganda and paranoia. At age nineteen, an innocent prank cuts the young Croatian`s budding medical career short and lands him in a notorious labor camp. Released on the eve of civil war, Ivan is drafted into the wrong army, becoming a pawn in an absurd conflict in which the rules and loyalties shift abruptly and without warning. But even in a world gone mad, one course of action remains eminently sane: survival. Told with bitingly dark humor and a deep tenderness, April Fool`s Day is both a devastating political satire and a razor-sharp parody of war.