S.: A Novel about the BalkansSlavenka Drakulic has been hailed as "a perceptive social critic...with a wonderful eye for detail" (The Washington Post). And her novel The Taste of a Man was praised as "stunningly good ... superbly crafted, with a journalist's eye for detail and a poet's feel for emotional truth" (Elle). Drakulic combines the best of both in S., her latest, most haunting novel to date. Set in 1992, during the height of the Bosnian war, S. reveals one of the most horrifying aspects of any war: the rape and torture of civilian women by occupying forces. S. is the story of a Bosnian woman in exile who has just given birth to an unwanted child; one without a country, a name, a father, or a language. It is the birth of this child that reminds her of an even more grueling experience--being repeatedly raped by Serbian soldiers in the "women's room" of a prison camp in Bosnia. Through a series of flashbacks, S. relives the unspeakable crimes she has endured, and in telling her story -- timely, strangely compelling, and ultimately about survival -- depicts the darkest side of human nature during wartime. |
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