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Ray's Reviews > As if I am not there: A novel about the Balkans
As if I am not there: A novel about the Balkans
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A difficult book to read and review.
S is a Muslim schoolteacher in a village in rural Bosnia in 1999. The war is going on but it is far away. Then Serbian soldiers come to the village and round up the villagers, who are taken to a holding camp. The men and women are separated and the men are taken away by Serb guards. After twenty minutes or so there is the sound of gunfire and the guards come back alone.
S is moved to a separate area within the camp, where younger women and girls are kept. At night drunken guards come and select that evenings entertainment. Sometimes the girls come back beaten and battered, sometimes they don't. No matter, there are more girls to replace the dead.
S eventually gets out in a prisoner swap and finds refuge in Sweden. There is one problem, she is pregnant and the father is a Serb rapist - one of many. What to do - the baby is innocent but also the result of a heinous crime.
An unsettling read, not for the squeamish, but an important work nonetheless.
S is a Muslim schoolteacher in a village in rural Bosnia in 1999. The war is going on but it is far away. Then Serbian soldiers come to the village and round up the villagers, who are taken to a holding camp. The men and women are separated and the men are taken away by Serb guards. After twenty minutes or so there is the sound of gunfire and the guards come back alone.
S is moved to a separate area within the camp, where younger women and girls are kept. At night drunken guards come and select that evenings entertainment. Sometimes the girls come back beaten and battered, sometimes they don't. No matter, there are more girls to replace the dead.
S eventually gets out in a prisoner swap and finds refuge in Sweden. There is one problem, she is pregnant and the father is a Serb rapist - one of many. What to do - the baby is innocent but also the result of a heinous crime.
An unsettling read, not for the squeamish, but an important work nonetheless.
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Ilse
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May 02, 2024 03:43AM
Maybe, as someone who is squeamish, I will regret reading it, but your review definitely makes me want to read this (not so much of her work is translated into to Dutch but this one is). I can imagine it must have been hard for her to write it, too.
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Ilse wrote: "Maybe, as someone who is squeamish, I will regret reading it, but your review definitely makes me want to read this (not so much of her work is translated into to Dutch but this one is). I can imag..."I can certainly recommend. The book is very powerful - it tunnels under the headlines and shows us the barbarity of war through telling individual stories, and is more relatable because of this.
If it helps, much of the book is about daily life in the camps, bad things happen, but mostly off the page.
