S

Drakulic, Slavenka. S: a Novel About the Balkans. Penguin, 1999.

Reason read: the war in Bosnia started in the month of April.

To set the stage: in 1992 the Bosnian War was raging. S. was only twenty-nine years old. She was a home-room teacher proud of her profession. Single and young, she had her whole life ahead of her. Early one morning, and without warning, she was bundled off to a warehouse by a boyish soldier toting guns and more than plenty of ammunition. Naively, even though he did not say much, she thought she was going away for a short time. Wanting to be prepared for anything, she packed a small backpack with a red dress and her very best fancy shoes made for dancing.
You cannot help but notice any character or location of importance is anonymized with a single letter. S., G., F., and the baby are all nameless. Where they are going is an unnamed town. Despite being nameless the characters are full of personality. E. is a nurse. Z. is E.’s daughter. D. is the cook. You get the picture. This unwillingness to give characters and places formal names gives the story anonymity and, by default, more authenticity. These things further removes S. from the realm of pure fiction. When we first meet S. it is after her detainment and she has given birth to a child. Her character broke my heart. Her newborn baby boy is a product of rape and therefor despised. She sees the child as a disease, a cancer, a parasite, or, at the very least, a burden she is unwilling to carry much less look upon. Who can blame her? Her survival after four months of unthinkable torture is nothing short of heroic.
The soldier’s abuse was hard to read: forcing a woman to drink his urine, putting his cigarettes out on her naked body, striking her about the face until she passes out from pain. Rape seemed like the most benign atrocity. Murder seemed the most merciful. Drakulic takes pity on us: S is only 200 pages long.

Profound words, “…the survival instinct is the highest law of existence” (p 55).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Balkan Specters” (p 31).