As if I am not there: A novel about the Balkans in Around the World in 80 Books

Oct 25, 2015 Bogdan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: central-europe

I always thought that war atrocities are something from the distant past, when there was no human rights neither Geneva convention. Usually I imagine them to be part of wars from the Dark Ages, or even more distant, like Antiquity or Stone Age. But I always forget how relatively recent were World Wars (a meager 70 years), or the Bosnian War or even more recently, the War from Eastern Ukraine, about which if I will hear similar atrocities I would not be surprised.

This is just what this novel and I always thought that war atrocities are something from the distant past, when there was no human rights neither Geneva convention. Usually I imagine them to be part of wars from the Dark Ages, or even more distant, like Antiquity or Stone Age. But I always forget how relatively recent were World Wars (a meager 70 years), or the Bosnian War or even more recently, the War from Eastern Ukraine, about which if I will hear similar atrocities I would not be surprised.

This is just what this novel and other of their kind are suppose to do: to not let us forget. It is so easy to forget this in normality of everyday life in which you don't need to worry about anything like the atrocities of war, but you are worrying about making money, paying everyday bills and how to buy that next thing you want so much. Absorbed by these trivial desires, we forget so easily about guns, atrocities committed by war criminals, genocide and so on. So this is why we need to remind ourselves that many such things have not happened so far away, neither in time neither in space and if we don't pay attention, we may allow them to repeat again sometime soon. Without any hesitation, I'll give it a 5 for premise.

Regarding the form, there are some interesting choices that add up to form an interesting story. First of all and most obvious, characters have no names, just initials to denote authenticity. Secondly, it has the central character "S." an intellectual young woman and this choice makes the introspection in her internal thoughts a lot more interesting than if it was a non-educated person. Lastly, the entire novel is written as a series of flashbacks from the main character. Quite interesting and good choices that make up a good novel, so I'll give it a 4 for form.

In terms of originality, given the fact that I live in a country neighboring the ex-Yugoslavia and that the Bosnian War happened while I was in my late childhood, I always tried to find good books about it. This one is for me the first one I read about Bosnian War, so I will give it a 5 for the level of originality.

On the characters, obviously the lead character as it is also the narrator is much more well constructed than the other characters. But even so, there were some interesting characters that proves Slavenka is a careful listener and understands human beings. For example the other women from the camp "women's room" or the Captain are quite intriguing ones. Apart from this, the author carefully stayed away from making a psychological treatise on guilt or victims recovery, without neglecting this aspect. In the end, it is obvious that the author worked as a journalist, and this is the reasons why I will give it a 4 for characters.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, there are a lot of traditional Chinese values and quite some sayings from popular wisdom or Confucius, but mainly Li tries it to make it accessible to any westerner. It is probably striking for the ones that did not lived under communism or are not accustomed with the terms or their full meaning used by those societies as "counterrevolutionary", "pioneer", "self-criticism" or "denunciation". I consider the author made a good mix between adding just enough of the local and time flavor so that we feel that the characters evolve in a world of their own, not just on a paper constructed world. That's why I will rate it with a 4 for complexity and difficulty.

In terms of credibility, from all the information I have (unfortunately not too much as I was a teenager back when this war broke with little interest in international politics), this is very accurate. It was also probably influenced a lot by the material Slavenka created as a war journalist, interviewing people from the temporary camps created in Croatia. Simply it is impossible to say it was not inspired by facts so my rating for credibility is 5.

The last criteria is edition. I purchased the novel already used and I was very glad it was in a quite good condition. I only noticed that the previous owner highlighted some passages and made some small comments on the sides of the highlighted paragraphs, but this did not bothered me too much. The translation it also feels very good, as if it was originally written in English. It is a nice paperback, so I'll give it a 4.

To summarize, this proves that there are also many contemporary books talking about war standing at similar levels with the classics, like Hasek's Svejk (The Good Soldier Švejk) or Remarque's All quiet on the Western Front (All Quiet on the Western Front). All in all, my final rating for it is 4.57, which I will round it to 5 on Goodreads system.


+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 4.57 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+