false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173372182m/278230.jpg 278230 9 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, <I>As If I Am Not There: A novel about the Balkans</I>. This scene, which flies in the face of maternal feeling, invites the question <I>why</I>: 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 <I>Against Our Will</I> 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. -- <I>Vicky Lebeau</I> 269850 4 11 1999 As If I Am Not There total:14|5:5|4:6|3:3|2:0|1:0| 14 58 127 1 4 0 false false Wed Aug 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 08 21:45:59 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 19 07:09:49 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Fri Nov 27 06:59:03 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 27 06:59:03 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Thu Nov 26 07:18:21 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 26 07:21:08 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Tue Nov 24 15:37:45 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 24 15:37:45 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sun Nov 15 21:12:44 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 15 21:12:44 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sun Nov 01 01:50:10 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 01 01:50:10 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Tue Oct 27 17:28:37 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 27 17:28:37 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Fri Oct 23 14:57:15 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 23 14:57:15 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Oct 17 08:33:48 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 17 08:33:48 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Oct 16 13:10:50 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 16 13:10:50 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue Oct 13 12:06:59 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 13 12:06:59 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Oct 11 01:44:04 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 11 01:44:04 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sat Oct 10 09:51:36 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 10 09:51:36 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Sep 28 18:55:16 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 28 18:55:16 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Sep 21 17:54:59 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 21 17:54:13 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Sep 21 02:29:36 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 21 02:29:36 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Sep 11 19:57:34 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 11 19:57:37 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Sep 11 05:57:31 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 11 05:57:31 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue Sep 08 11:37:02 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 08 11:37:02 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Aug 31 21:06:09 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 31 21:06:09 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=278230