Getting Hold of a Woman

In spring 1999, having completed his novel The Legend of the Tear Jugglers, Darvasi returned to his original short prose style. Against the backdrop of the mass ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and the bombing of former Yugoslavia a cycle of stories was born which number among his very best, albeit with a sharply bitter tone to them.

They are set during the war in Bosnia and its aftermath, in what are in part fictitious places between Sarajevo, the »Field of Blackbirds«, and Serbian Batchka, in a climate of total disorder, lawlessness and cruelty. Sons shoot their fathers, assault minors and the dead. Securing a woman is driven by an animalist will to survive. But the women with such unusual names as Rozália Fugger-Schmidt or Julia Sonne are not merely victims but also self-possessed beauties, who manage to get by with artificial limbs or are capable of sleeping for weeks on end. Repeatedly slipping into the surreal, in these incredible stories Darvasi tells of the extreme conditions born of lasting violence.