Some Stories Just Need to Be Told: A Review of ‘S.’

Master Bookseller Brian reviews Slavenka Drakulic’s book, S.: A Novel About the Balkans.

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We’ve all seen the Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic in the news lately. Some, or most of us, have silently cheered as one of the monsters of our time is brought to justice. While we know that even if Mladic is made to pay for his sins it won’t un-kill those countless people or un-rape those nameless victims, it does help to bring some of the worst atrocities ever performed into daylight, and that’s a good thing. Some stories just need to be told, no matter how much it hurts to hear them. Slavenka Drakulic’s phenomenal book S. A Novel About the Balkans takes us behind the walls of the Bosnian conflict of the 1990’s. It’s perfectly written, at times hard to read, and unbelievably important. Here’s Drakulic talking about her research process:

“After the Bosnian war, a strange thing happened: many women began talking about the mass rapes, perhaps for the first time in history. They talked to reporters and health care workers, to the representatives of the international community, and so forth. Several collections of their eyewitness accounts were then published. It was not easy to get them talking, especially at first. They were still in shock, distrustful, and afraid to speak about what happened to them. The reasons for opening up were different for each victim. The obvious presence of media in the camps brought pressure to reveal the truth about the systematic rape of these Muslim women by the Serbian army and paramilitary. Other women were convinced that they should report what happened, regardless of the consequences. They understood that there were too many victims to cover up the crimes. The women who spoke were brave, considering the patriarchal culture they come from. But these women were only able to recount the facts-the names of the men who raped them or the names of their husbands’ murderers-they could not speak of their own feelings.”

Those of us who remember the end of the Bosnian conflict might remember that the accusations of genocide, death camps, and mass rape were all denied by men like Mladic. Mladic, and those under his control, called these women liars. Drakulic has put their stories into a book, and we should listen to them. Come by the store, we have plenty of copies of this book on our shelves.