false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173372183m/278232.jpg 278232 4 <i>"While she was in the warehouse S. feared uncertainty. Any kind of certainty seemed preferable to her. Now she was at least rid of that fear. There was no more uncertainty. She was in a storehouse of women, in a room where female bodies were stored for the use of men."</i><p> The use of rape as a mode of warfare was one of the atrocities that made "ethnic cleansing" such a horrifying euphemism in the '90s. The number of Muslim rape victims has been hard to establish (estimates are as high as 60,000), and the depths of the damage even more difficult to comprehend. Hidden behind the newspaper accounts--the mind-numbing policy changes, drawn and redrawn borders, and fluctuating statistics--are the stories of what happened to thousands of Muslim women and how they have since dealt with their experience. In <I>S: A Novel About the Balkans</I>, the journalist Slavenka Drakulic uses a fictional everywoman, S., to convey the complex psychological torture of the victims of large-scale, systematic rape during the Bosnian War.<p> Drakulic's plain, graphic prose is starkly effective; not surprisingly, her book is most powerful in the passages detailing the women's treatment by the cadres of Serbian soldiers. But S. is not just a passive victim: even in such conditions, there are moral choices that must be made and consequences to one's actions. S. discovers this through her "arrangement" with the camp commander, who chooses her for a more elaborate form of rape that involves candlelight dinners and her playing the role of a seductress. Submitting to the fantasy in order to remove herself from the gang rapes of the "women's room," S. refrains from using her new status to improve the lot of the other prisoners. The tradeoff risks the respect of her fellow victims ("You've sold yourself cheap," one of them says to her), and the future psychological cost isn't clear. When she discovers she is pregnant--the father could be any one of a hundred soldiers--she faces another set of difficult decisions. Should she bring a child born of such hate into the world? And should she tell the child about its origins? Or is she instead obliged to tell the truth about the war? "Which is the greater," she wonders, "the right to a father or the right to the truth." Though not overtly political, <I>S.</I> forces us to consider the long-term tragedy of the female victims of the Bosnian War, and is all the more valuable for its inclusion of these gray-area compromises and their painful aftereffects. <I>--John Ponyicsanyi</I> 1605415 2000 S.: A Novel about the Balkans total:105|5:1|4:4|3:2|2:0|1:0| 105 430 167 25 3 0 false false Sun Jul 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 21 00:43:46 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 21 01:01:50 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Apr 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue May 05 08:29:50 -0700 2009 Tue May 05 08:47:52 -0700 2009
*AHEM*

Anywho...

I lucked out. With the novel I mean.

The novel sta...more...]]> 5 0 false true Mon Sep 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 09 01:49:25 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 09 02:14:54 -0700 2009
In 200 pages Drakulic describes one unforgivable atrocity after the ne...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Sep 25 19:24:29 -0700 2008 Thu Sep 25 19:38:03 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Apr 10 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Mar 31 23:12:51 -0700 2008 Thu Apr 10 13:48:41 -0700 2008 a day in the life of ivan denisovich. which begs the inevitable question-- why am i readin...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Nov 07 13:10:34 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 07 13:16:11 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 13 04:56:41 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 13 05:00:43 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Jan 11 11:21:11 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 11 11:21:11 -0800 2009 10 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jul 29 07:01:03 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 13 06:32:16 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Oct 06 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 10:07:33 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 10:09:40 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Oct 07 08:05:26 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 07 08:07:26 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Jun 27 10:18:53 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 05 08:18:22 -0700 2007
UPDATE: It doesn't matter that this book is terrifying and horrifying and vi...more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jun 30 13:16:06 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 30 13:24:40 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2001 Tue Apr 14 09:19:42 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 14 09:22:09 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Apr 01 16:12:11 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 01 16:14:35 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Mon Oct 05 20:20:45 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 05 20:21:19 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Sun Mar 29 08:42:12 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 14 15:18:10 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Wed Mar 26 17:58:47 -0700 2008 Wed Mar 26 18:06:15 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed Aug 22 13:08:35 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 22 13:15:43 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Jun 06 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 04 07:59:05 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 06 16:27:24 -0700 2008
I look forward to reading this author's other books.]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=278232