Customer Reviews

Homecoming

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The comparison made with Jerzy Kosinsky in an earlier review intrigued me, as Kosinsky and Kane both set their stories in a rural Eastern Europe on the periphery of war. But while Kosinsky wallows hedonistically in vivid details of Technicolor violence, piling episode upon episode, Kane is more concerned with exploring what it really feels like to be caught up in such tragic events and succeeds in conveying an enveloping sense of hopelessness. She juxtaposes the horrific with the banal, as in the gypsy girl who is sprayed with disinfectant before being raped.

Homecoming is a very fast paced novel, (I read it in an afternoon); with interesting characters and a situation that keeps you eager to find out what happens next. This is one of the best war novels to emerge from the post cold war conflicts.

Homecoming is powerful. Kane writes a compelling read with characters that are complex and unforgettable. Her incredibly descriptive style literally transports you to the homefront in the wake of the Bosnian war, giving first-hand perspective on the clash of two cultures. Kane brings this incomprehensible tragedy to a personal level by allowing us to experience the impact of such insanity on everyday man and woman. Those who are left only appear to survive.

Everybody knows that war is hell. The thing people forget about is that there is a period after war, sometimes called reconstruction, sometimes called chaos. Especially in a civil war, there are feuds left over that still simmer, or revenge rears its ugly head. Such is the case in Natasha Radojcic-Kane's searing debut novel Homecoming.

Homecoming is about a muslim soldier named Halid returning from the Balkan Wars of the 1990's to his village. He finds an almost otherworldly atmosphere has settled over the place. It is a place of paramilitary police who are just as corrupt as the criminals. It is also a place of great poverty where the young have to steal or sell their bodies for money. In one poignant scene Halid sneaks up to a window to gaze on the emaciated form of his former lover as she works in the kitchen. Everyone has been changed by the war and continues to suffer from it even after it is over. Halid is going to be different though, somehow during the war he acquired a great deal of money, and maybe he might be able to rescue himself and his love from the horrible darkness of death by going to America. What follows is a tragedy equal to anything Thomas Hardy or William Faulkner wrote.

This book was an experience. It's not really to be enjoyed like entertainment. It's meant to send you looking into yourself and the jaws of war. Sometimes your past comes to haunt you and if you dont free yourself from it, it could destroy you. Even though the author was born in Belgrade, I have no idea if she is writing through first person experience. It doesn't really make a difference. The imagination can be just as gruesome as reality when it comes to war. Just ask Stephen Crane. I highly recommend this novel.

The landscape, the cast of characters and the atrocity of war reminded very much of The Painted Bird by Jerzy Koszinsky. This is writing at it's best.

Halid, a Muslim soldier, has just returned home after fighting in Sarajevo. The peaceful little village he left is now a hotbed of hate between the Muslims and Christians. His best friend, Momir, was a Christian. Now Momir is dead. Halid may be alive, but he's haunted by a crime he committed during the war. Refusing to return home to his mother, he wanders the streets of his village, sleeping in fields, smoking and gambling and drinking, seeking out Momir's wife (whom he has always loved), fighting for his life in a town that has lost its.

HOMECOMING is relentlessly dark. Although the grammar is at times bizarrely constructed, the prose is well written and easy to read, the images are evocative, the darkness is a driving force that propels the reader through the increasingly savage world straight into the bloody ending. I enjoyed the story because I know little about Sarajevo. However, I did not grow attached to any of the characters (perhaps because I wasn't supposed to), and even the horrible finish didn't evoke much sorrow. This novel is far more instructive than it is entertaining, far more tragic than it is intriguing.

As war novels go, HOMECOMING isn't the best, but it certainly earns a recommendation for stark honesty.

Muslim soldier Halid returns home after several years in a war around Bosnian landscape. Nothing is the same any more. Roads are destroyed, people devasted by death, hunger and poverty. Halid is disillusioned, lonely, hurt both physically and emotionally.

It is upon his arrival to his native village that his life starts to unravel. Former relationships with his friends and relatives are not the same. The woman he loved in his youth is a widow now with a young boy to take care of. His mother is old and spent and lives in a house one step before disintegration. His former mentor is dying of gangrene on his leg, while his childhood friends, now men are spending their time drinking, chasing prostitutes and hunting whatever animals still live in forests.

Most fascinating book I read recently about loss, greed, regret, guilt and grief. Contemporary writers like these are rare and truly precious. I absolutely loved this book. It is original, compelling and heartbreaking.

A great read that really makes you think about all you have in life. I bought copies of this book for several people on my holiday list last year.