The second noteworthy book reviewed in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review is The Delivery Room by Sylvia Brownrigg. Why is it noteworthy? As usual, not because of the review itself, but because of what a careful red reader can glean from it. The novel's main character, it seems, is a Serb. Not only a Serb, but a politically and historically conscious Serb who sharply opposes the U.S./NATO breakup of Yugoslavia and the imperialists' 1999 bombing war against her country. Dare I hope? Can it be: a fiction that rejects all the outrageous U.S. lies about Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo that have been served up to justify the Clinton administration/Pentagon/Nato criminal war of aggression? I won't know for sure until I read it. But reading between the lines of this lukewarm and ultimately politically hostile review, hope swells.
I have read one earlier novel by this author: Pages for You, which I liked and which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.
Back to Yugoslavia. Some years ago I read a fine novella that gives a feel for how that country's many nationalities were brought together under Tito's leadership into one united socialist country that succeeded in breaking down divisions of religion, language and so on. Reviving the old divisions, fomenting racism and national hatred while tearing down the accomplishments of united Yugoslavia are in my opinion the central crimes of Clinton's 1999 war, crimes that were chronicled at a June 2000 War Crimes Tribunal. Anyway, that novella is Shadow Partisan by Nadja Tesich. Tesich is a Yugoslav Serbian writer and was a fierce opponent of the U.S./NATO war. Her brother was the Academy-Award-winning screenwriter Steve Tesich, and she writes movingly on her website about how he came to become more politically aware and how, despite his Oscar, he could not get any of his more political work published.
