Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

BOTM March 2019, Our moderator is Tracy.

Discussion questions:

1. Setting: This is set in the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia) in the early 1990s, during a very difficult time in Balkan history. What do you know about this time and area? What press coverage do you remember from that time?

2. What other books have you read about this conflict? (Doesn't have to be a 1001 book)

3. Characters: Why were almost all the characters represented with an initial, or a title (eg: the captain)? What is the significance of the characters that were actually named?

4. Three quotes from the book: "Perhaps this deliberate blindness is a form of self preservation." "You can survive anything." "The only thing I learned in the camp was the importance of forgetting."
What do these quotes have in common? Can the attitudes expressed by these quotes be expected under the circumstances?

5. Why did the soldiers perform the atrocities that they did? Was it political, hatred, or power?

6. This is the story of a victim: why did S. use makeup when it was her turn? Why didn't the other women?

7. This was a very grim story. Do you think the ending was a happy one? Did it fit with the story?

8. What affected you the most about this story?

9. What other discussion points would you like to address?

10. Post your review.

This is an interview with the author, for more info about her.

I just finished the book today, having started about two weeks ago and mixing it in with other reading. The writing style was spare but strong, which is a style I tend to prefer and I liked it very much.

The County and City library systems here (Salt Lake City area) didn't have this book but I was able to borrow it from the university library. I plan to read Drakulic's nonfiction book How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed in the future; the city system does have that.

I know rather little about the Serbia- Bosnia war and haven't read any books about it. I remember press coverage but not really any details of it. There are a couple of nurses at the hospital where I work who were immigrant-refugees from Bosnia at that time. One told me once years ago that, "Americans don't appreciate how easy a life they have". We never directly discussed the war except she said she was in a refugee camp in Germany for a couple years and can speak basic German.

3. Why were almost all the characters represented with an initial?
I read in a reader review that Drakulic used initials for the characters to emphasize the depersonalization that came with being in a prison camp- this made sense to me. I did give S. a name in my own mind as I read however (Sonja). I wonder if others did that as well.

7. I'm not sure if the ending was a happy one but at least the last part was less grim than the rest of it.

8. What affected you the most about this story?
I mostly felt a sadness for women that suffered in this and other wars in this way and an anger at men who abuse women and children. The suicide of one of the characters was particularly disturbing.

1. I remember it very well. Especially the siege of Dubrovnik and the snipers involved. Also the indelible images of Muslim men in captivity. When visiting Split for a rugby tournament in 2007 history was made because it was the first time the Croatian and Serbian teams stayed in the same hotel.

2. No, I have read nothing.

#1 and #2 I do not remember much but I recall a neighbor’s horror. I do not recall their ethnicity but they were from the area, I believe Croatia but I am not sure. I have read Yugoslavia, My Fatherland which is about the break up of Yugoslavia and just finished A Spare Life which takes place in Macedonia but talks about the horrors in Bosnia as a background topic. However, I have not read specifically about Bosnia or even fiction about what happened there. I just started to read this book.

I finished the book. It is certainly a difficult emotional read but very worthwhile.
3. Characters: Why were almost all the characters represented with an initial, or a title (eg: the captain)? What is the significance of the characters that were actually named?

Although S. is a very distinctly unique character I suspect from the author's point of view she represented many women who lost themselves in the war. All the characters felt the need to bury their war time experiences in order to hope to be able to one day live in the "real" world again. In this way, not naming the characters gave them a larger context.

4. Three quotes from the book: "Perhaps this deliberate blindness is a form of self preservation." "You can survive anything." "The only thing I learned in the camp was the importance of forgetting."
What do these quotes have in common? Can the attitudes expressed by these quotes be expected under the circumstances?

The book refers to how human brains will work very hard to survive, burying memories and forgetting the horrors so that life can go on. I do not think that you would be able to go on if you were not able to wipe out whole sections of what you went through.

5. Why did the soldiers perform the atrocities that they did? Was it political, hatred, or power?

It was everything. The book does mention that the soldiers were trapped also in a different kind of hell. When social structures break down the vacuum is replaced by very base survival instincts: kill or be killed, prove you are a Man, stand up for your tribe, religion, district, family against the Other. This area of the world has been at the cross roads of cultures for thousands of years and as the powers that held it together (Austria Hungary Empire/ Ottoman/Communist Block) fell apart all the nationalistic and tribal loyalties rose up and remembered in mass every wrong ever done to them. It does make one despair of us humans.

6. This is the story of a victim: why did S. use makeup when it was her turn? Why didn't the other women?
Make up was a kind of mask for S. She felt that she could be another person, a person with some control over her circumstances. She could even pretend that she was seducing the men instead of simply being raped. The others had already lost any ability to see themselves with any kind of control.

7. This was a very grim story. Do you think the ending was a happy one? Did it fit with the story?
I think it did fit the story. I do think that this happened to many people. Some women who swear to give up their unwanted children end up keeping them because they realize they are innocent of their father's sins. I can't say it was a happy ending. It did have a drop of hope in it but really, that little touch of hope does not make up for all that lead up to it.

8. What affected you the most about this story?

I found the story impactful because it was so believable. As S. went from bad circumstances to worse she would tell herself, "okay, I can live with this", "this isn't so bad" and then it would get worse. It simply was horrible, but the will to survive is incredibly strong.

I also finished the book, but I find it hard to make any comment or even rate the book. It is a sad, disturbing story by which I was particularly affected because things described were happening in my country of that time while I was teenager. Although I was not personally involved, it was very close by. What is hard to believe is that even so close, you were completely unaware of what was happening.
Gail made a very good comments in many questions.
I would just like to add that if you are not familiar with what was going on in ex Yugoslavia, you cannot see from this book that all fighting parties in the conflict were acting in similar way, including atrocities of all involved parties. Which, according to my opinion, makes behavior of soldiers and their atrocities to women not political. Their brutality is something I cannot understand, nor explain, but I think it is happening in every war, anywhere and any time.

3. I think that calling someone by an initial, rather than their name meant that they were being treated as individuals, rather than as members of a tribe, so to speak. No one's background, apart from the narrator, was developed. So they were all equal in their treatment by the narrator. The only person that I can remember with a name was Maj, the woman who shared her birthing unit. even then it was not clear whether Maj was Swedish or another refugee. Were there others?
4. I have just read a review of a new book about Holocaust survivors and it had strikingly similar quotes. In this book "The Boy Who Followed his Father to Auschwitz" there was a younger brother who was shipped to the U.S. at the age of nine. He is struggling with the fact that he can remember nothing about missing his family or about being traumatised by the separation. He can remember nothing at all. So even less horrifying experiences can nonetheless lead to amnesia as a coping mechanism.
5. How can one answer such a question? Everyone struggles with understanding such atrocities. In the book Samira wonders whether she would be capable of similar iniquities. One does not what one is capable of unless one is in a similar position.
6. Samira used makeup because it helped her to play a character other than herself. She attempted to remove herself from the situation psychologically by becoming another imaginary individual.
7. The end was bittersweet. The revelation that the baby looked like her dead sister brought her to the realisation that the baby had her characteristics as well as those of her rapists.
8. The worst of many terrible images concerned the fathers and sons who were taken out to the field. The depravity was overwhelming.
9. I remember the despair of thinking that it was unimaginable that such things were taking place in Europe, in the 1990's. How can we ignore situations like Rwanda, Croatia and now Syria? What can individuals do to try to prevent more such atrocities?
10. This is a beautifully written account of the atrocities of the Croatian War of Independence and the experiences of a young schoolteacher caught up in the vicious fighting. The depiction of rape, executions and general humiliation of Moslem civilians is harrowing but unforgettable. The senselessness of war, the unspeakable cruelty of one ethnic group to another and the survival mechanisms of sex slaves are depicted unflinchingly. It is an important book which undoubtedly belongs on the 1001 list.

1. I knew absolutely nothing and remember nothing as I was too young in the 1990s to take an interest in the world beyond my own concerns.

2. This is my first book about that particular conflict.

3. The named characters that I can remember are either from the past before S boards the bus or from the future after she has left the camp so maybe the significance is that to S they represent the "real world" outside of the war zone. I thought the women were referred to by initials to keep them anonymous because they wouldn't want the world know to know what happened to them and it was not S' place to reveal to the world who they really are.

4. The quotes are all ways of surviving you get through one day at a time, you forget that life was different and once it was over you have to move on with life by forgetting what occurred.

5. I think it was a mixture of all 3 with a touch of fear added in, if you didn't do it you may be accused of sympathising and someone else would do it anyway.

6. S made herself into someone else so that it wasn't her being raped it was the new makeup wearing women. The other women didn't understand how this escape mechanism worked and they didn't want to seem to be encouraging it.

7. The end made me cry. Yes I think it did fit in with the rest of the story, through the baby S has found her family again. Equally S could have given away the baby without holding him and that would have felt right to me as well.

8. 2 incidents really had an impact on me, the girl raped and essentially murdered by her brothers friend and the 13 year old girl raped and murdered the day before the women were due to leave the camp.

10. This was a 5 star read for me it took me a while to get through as I had to take regular breaks from the horrific events contained within it pages.

The writing is sparse and uncompromising. S is not asking the reader to feel sympathy for her or the other women she is merely telling the reader this is my story this is what happened what you make of it is up to you.

Not knowing anything about this part of the world in the 1990s I was shocked that such horrors were taking place and I can't imagine why the whole world was not outraged by it.

The ending really packed an emotional punch.

This definitely deserves its place on the 1001 list.

I was finished reading the book, after it got delivered to me a couple of days ago, and I gave it 4 stars: it was deeply affecting, and I definitely think has a justified place on the list, especially since there is not a lot of other literature on the list dealing with this conflict/period in history. There's already a lot of great answers to the discussion questions here, but I guess I'll add my thoughts too:

1. I was born in 1993, an therefore have no personal memory of the war in the Balkans. , I did have to do a project on it in middle school. But, that being said, I have a admittedly basic but not in depth understanding of the conflict.

2. I'm not sure that I have read another book about the conflict now that I think of it, I think it is a part of modern history that is not well understood or covered in North America, especially if you were not alive at the time.

3. I think the initials, as others have mentioned, contribute to the depersonalization of the prisoners and emphasizes the dehumanization they go through. Naming the guards and soldiers with titles also displays that they do not interact with the narrator on a human level, but also emphasizes their authority over the prisoners and the inhumanity of the conflict. The few named characters- such as Maj- seem detached from the main horrors of the story, indicating that they have not been similarly stripped of their humanity.

4. All of these quotes suggest the power of forgetting or ignoring trauma as a means of survival. I think these attitudes can be expected given the circumstances of the novel: and oftentimes, people can have selective amnesia or even conscious refusal to reflect upon trauma events in their lives as a form of coping. I used to volunteer with WWII veterans, and often they would bring up everything that happened in their lives except the war, which was understandable given the types of things some of them would say on the instances they did.

5. I think that's a big complex question that I'm likely not qualified to perfectly answer, but I imagine that it would vary a bit from individual to individual, but in almost all cases would be some degree of combination of all three. When political groups wage in-group/out-group based conflicts it is always political on that level and based in power, and often leverage the power they require for their political goals by priming their citizens to hate those in the out group to the extent they enough people in the group yearn to wield power over the "over". I think that is largely what is happening here in the book.

6. As others have stated, it was to become someone else or feel like it was happening to someone else so that she could cope.

7. The ending is not necessarily happy: she can't go back to being who she was before the atrocities, but it is still somewhat hopeful. I think it did fit with the story, because there are many people who do survive atrocities to go on to lead seemingly normal lives: I've met many myself through my work with veterans, as well we had family friends growing up that met in Auschwitz and went on to have a big family in Canada.

8. The way that S. seems to acclimatize and objectively observe what is going in the story is itself so affecting, that people can and did become accustomed to these horrors happening to them is harrowing.

I finished this book this morning in my kids' dentist's waiting room. I'm not afraid to admit that I got emotional at the ending.

1. Setting: During the time covered in the novel I was in my last year of high school. I do remember news coverage of the war and that it was a civil war between Muslims and non-Muslims. I also recall some level of genocide.

2. This is the first book that I've read about this conflict.

3. Characters: I think the initials were used instead of names to show the dehumanization of the women in the camp. The women aren't who they were in their former lives, they are now just another body.

4. Three quotes from the book: I feel that these quotes helped show the shock that the women were in due to their extreme unfortunate circumstances. They become very focused on self preservation and become blind to the plight of the others around them. It is a defense mechanism.

5. I will answer this question focused on what the soldiers did to the women in the Women's Room. I saw the soldiers actions as an act of power. Rape is about POWER. In the prison camp in particular, the soldiers thought of the women as second-class citizens, not just because of their gender, but also because of their ethnicity/religion. The men expressed their authority by committing violent sexual assault against the women.

6. This is the story of a victim: S. saw the makeup as a mask, further shielding her from the horrific events she is going through.

7. The ending did make me well up a little . I didn't find it too out of place. I liked the spark of hope and the hint that she may find some level of happiness. Her life will forever be affected by the war and her time in the camp, but she finds a small taste of a way to move on.

I read this for the first time several years ago, and this book always came to mind when I thought about the most difficult books to read. I decided to read it again this month, and that opinion has not changed.

1) I have read several books on the topic and I have heard stories from several people who lived there during the conflict.

2) I have read quite a few and can't remember all of the titles. Some that come to mind are Zlata's Diary, The Cellist of Sarajevo, Nowhere Man, The Day of the Pelican, My Cat Yugoslavia, The Tiger's Wife, The Walnut Mansion, etc.

3) I think this added to their anonymity. They were dehumanized and weren't treated like people, so therefore they didn't have a name. The people who were named weren't prisoners.

4) These quotes all seem to refer to defense mechanisms used to cope with difficult situations. The attitudes expressed by these quotes are definitely understandable in these circumstances.

5) I think it was a combination of all three. It is something I will never fully understand, but it has been a recurrent theme throughout history.

6) The makeup was a way of pretending to be someone else by putting on a facade. It also served to trick the perpetrators into thinking they were being seduced and reducing their power. It helped her to deal with what was happening to her.

7) I didn't find the ending necessarily a happy one, but it could have ended much worse. It is about as happy as it could be, given the circumstances. It did fit with the story.