Goli Otok: Hell in the Adriatic [Paperback]

Mr. Josip Zoretic (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 2007

"Goli Otok - Hell in the Adriatic" is one man's story of life, death, escape, and punishment in post-World War II Yugoslavia. The man was Josip Zoretic and the setting is Goli Otok, the "Naked Island" prison camp in the Adriatic Sea. The story is straight forward and brutally frank in its descriptions of day-to-day life on the island-prison. Some years ago Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave a similar picture in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" about life in the Gulags of the Soviet Union. This book brings light to the other gulags in the former Yugoslavia and puts to rest once and for all the myth of "Communism with a Human Face." C. Michael McAdams University of San Francisco, retired Author of "Croatia: Myth & Reality"

Product Details

• Paperback: 154 pages
• Publisher: Virtualbookworm.com Publishing (April 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589399900
• ISBN-13: 978-1589399907
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,724,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars suspenseful, absurdist, and instructive, May 20, 2007

By 

ivan novakov - See all my reviews

This review is from: Goli Otok: Hell in the Adriatic (Paperback)

Although Goli Otok is a memoir, it is written so vividly, with a lot of dialogue, that it reads like a novel, a grim political satire with humor, wit, and insightful historical asides. I enjoyed reading it more than I expected I would. I strongly recommend the book to wide audiences, historians, travelers. . . everybody.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Read about the prison experiences in Goli Otok, November 12, 2007

By 

Nancy Crenshaw (Colorado) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Goli Otok: Hell in the Adriatic (Paperback)

This book is a must for the reader who is interested in post-war Yugoslavia. It relates the experiences of prisoners who were punished and tortured, sometimes to death, on what is know as the "Naked Island." The book spans a seven-year period, starting in 1962, when the author was arrested for political reasons and sentenced to a term for crimes he did not commit. He is beaten and tortured numerous times in an effort to extract a fabricated confession and is finally tried and convicted. From inside the prison, he witnesses the atrocities that the Communist regime inflicted on anyone who did not abide by their ideology. The accounts are straighforward and written in a simple manner. The author does not espouse his own political theories and refrains from relating the grisliest details. It is a book of events that enables the reader to make up his own mind about the ethics of the Communist era and those they enpowered.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've bought 5 copies to hand out to friends, August 14, 2007

By 

Lone Lundsgaard - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Goli Otok: Hell in the Adriatic (Paperback)

Most people know that the communist countries in central and eastern european oppressed political opponants throughout the latter half of last century. But it still remains abstract knowledge. By contrast, this book makes it tangible: By following the author's personal story of how he got send to the Goli Otok prison camp and staid there from 1962-69 you get a sense of the arbitrariness and brutal torture facing people that the communist system considers political opponents.

The book is short, but very tough to read. Yet it ought to be mandatory reasing in school - otherwise we won't learn from history.