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Amazon.co.uk Review
Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm, 27 March 1993. A newborn, a boy, is stretched out in his cot; to S., his mother, he is "supposed to be her son". He is, in fact, a "nameless little being ... condemned to death from the start". It's a stark, and startling, scene to open Slavenka Drakulic's fourth work of fiction, As If I Am Not There: A novel about the Balkans. This scene, which flies in the face of maternal feeling, invites the question why: Why does this woman, feeling only animosity for her child, imagine pressing a pillow gently over his face to end both his suffering and hers? Of course, he is a child of war: The novel's title announces that; more specifically, a child of rape. S., as we learn through the book, is a survivor of the "women's room", part of the camp in Bosnia where she, like so many other women, are raped over and over again in an act of war which will dispossess them of mind and body. It's some years now since Susan Brownmiller's classic Against Our Will depicted rape as an act of civic and sexual war against women but her feminist thesis agitates throughout this novel. "Drakulic takes us down into the very heart of the Balkan darkness", writes Michael Ignatieff; she does so by forcing her readers to look at the "way a body can be enslaved which is known only to women." Rape is one reference here; (unwanted) pregnancy is the other. This book is on the cusp between the literature of survival that frames its story--the opening epigraphs from Primo Levi, Eva Grlic, Varlam Shalamov-- and the special terror of an act of war which violates a woman and the child to whom she is fated to give life. -- Vicky Lebeau
Review
Ghastly in its purist sense; read it in the kitchen if you dare (DAILY TELEGRAPH )
Celebratory in tone, The Taste of a Man is also a heartfelt, if unrepentant confession ... Drakulic does not disappoint (NEW STATESMAN )
It is a tribute to Drakulic's senstivity that we emerge from the desperate tale with a real feeling of hope. (THE TIMES )
Drakulic does not permit ignotance. The tale she tells is as bad as it gets... It isn't a hopeful tale, but it is a necessary one. Drakulic has taken the reader to places where CNN will never reach: she teaches lessons in horror and makes the unimaginable (SCOTSMAN )
Celebratory in tone, The Taste of a Man is also a heartfelt, if unrepentant confession ... Drakulic does not disappoint (NEW STATESMAN )
It is a tribute to Drakulic's senstivity that we emerge from the desperate tale with a real feeling of hope. (THE TIMES )
Drakulic does not permit ignotance. The tale she tells is as bad as it gets... It isn't a hopeful tale, but it is a necessary one. Drakulic has taken the reader to places where CNN will never reach: she teaches lessons in horror and makes the unimaginable (SCOTSMAN )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Harrowing,but gripping read...........,
By
This review is from: As If I Am Not There (Paperback)
This is a quite simply stunning book. "S" is a Bosnian Muslim teacher in a small village when war breaks out with Serbia.The account of her mundane capture by Serb irregulars, and subsequent incarceration and abuse in a camp is both shocking and intensely moving.Moments of tenderness among her fellow internees and horrifying moral choices interweave to prevent the reader becoming numbed to the sheer inhumanity of her experiences.
I am not an over sensitive reader,(I have been a Police Officer for 20 years)but this is an affecting book that I read in one sitting and will read again.Highly recommended.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Moving,
This review is from: As If I Am Not There (Paperback)
As a member of forensic teams in the Balkans, I helped gather evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity and dealt with the victims of Omarska and Luca camps. Examining and recording some of the dreadful atrocities committed by the perpetrators left me at a loss in understanding the mindset of the killers and abusers of innocent men and women. Reading this beautifully written book has helped me come to terms with the disturbing images that still visit me during the night in my sleep.
I wish that everyone who failed to understand the Balkan wars and how neighbours turned on one another, reads and learns from this book. The atrocities and use of rape as weapons of war continues to this day in other countries. Slavenka Drakulic's words are as relevant and important today, as they were about what happened during the nineties.
2.0 out of 5 stars
disappointed,
By
This review is from: As If I Am Not There (Paperback)
not what i exspected i think it is more for women than men,dragged out a bit to slow for my taste. (as if i`m not there)
yours ray v
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