Customer Reviews

Knife

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This book is about human tragedy, beliefs, pride, inat, history, religion, local culture, and foreign intervention and domination of a native population. It forces all Southern Slavs to look at themselves first as fellow Southern Slavs, and then to identify themselves by religion and politics. The novleist expresses it beautifully through dramatic incidents, which form a background to the present day political situation in the former Yugoslavia. The novel captivates the reader from beginning to the end. KNIFE tells us that history should not be concealed from the general public. Had the issues expressed in this novel been resolved immediately after World War II, the present Balkan situation would not have occurred. The media and US politicians could not have revised the history of the Southern Slavs. After all, Christianity, Islam, Fascism and Communism are foreign influences over which Southern Slavs fought, unfortunately with a knife.

Vuk Draskovic, a gifted writer, eloquently reveals the emotional and mental anguish that comes with the gruesome violence in the Balkans over the centuries. Dismissed as too nationalistic by some, the novelist is stunning in his brilliant ability to make the reader feel the anguish and uncertainty of the characters. One comes away from the novel clearly seeing the cause of the Muslim/Christian conflict in the former Yugoslavia and the dangers of political polarization. A cautionary tale for these times of increasing political polarization in the United States.

Vuk Draskovic is an amazing writer of great power. Knife is his most controversial novel, almost banned when it was first published in the early '80s.
This is a story about the search for some of the most fundamental of life's questions: who am I? What am I? etc. Draskovic creates believable characters; you will laugh, hate, love, and cry along with them. It shows better than most books I've read that nothing is black and white, it shows in the most realistic way, contradictory feelings and conflicts that cannot be resolved.
Loosely based on historical facts, Knife also gives an opportunity to examine the history of the conflicts in the Balkans. Book goes beyond this, though, and talks about universal themes as any other classic. This could have been set in England, Ireland, Spain, anywhere in the world and it would still be as powerful and gripping.
Highly recommended!

If you want to learn more about turbulent history of former Yugoslavia, this is a book for you. The main character is trying to find out more about his roots, and what he finds changes him forever. One of the best books from this part of Europe.

This book is so well written that the only reason it wouldn't qualify for the Nobel prize is that it is too blunt. It is not politically correct. The narrative makes it seem like a film in the way the pictures in your head change as you read the words. It's well written. The dialogue is natural and flowing. Character development is superb and well developed.

The novel explores the islamification of Bosnia's Serbs and their metamorphosis into "Bosnian Muslims" or "Bosniaks" as they want to be called today. They used to call themselves

"Turks" when the Ottomans were ruling the Balkans and before the Turks, they called themselves Serbs (this is backed up by the medieval documents of the Bosnian kings).

Set in Bosnia in the 60s, Alija Osmanovic - a Muslim boy raised in a Serb-hating, fundementalist Muslim family - discovers that he was born into the Serb family Jugovic who were neighbours and blood relatives of the Osmanovic. The Osmanovic family descended from a Jugovic who converted to Islam in the 1600s and started his own family line but they cherished the memory descent through the Jugovic family for 400 years.

In WWII, the Osmanovic family became supporters of the Croatian-Muslim pro-NAZI wwii gov't to the extent that they joined gov't sponsored militias which killed Serb civilians. One day they razed to the ground and killed all the people of the village where the Jugovic family lived. The Osmanovic fascists decide to keep a Jugovic baby as a memento and give him to the mother of one the Osmanovic fascists who was killed that day. They named him Alija. Alija is ignorant of the situation for most of his life and grows up with the prejudices of his fundamentalist, fascistic family and thinking he is one of them.

Later on the boy meets an elderly Muslim whom he knew vaguely as a boy, who teaches Alija of the Serb identity of Bosnian Muslims and helps Alija come to terms with his own Serb identity and Jugovic descent when it is proved to him beyond all doubt. The way Draskovic describes the delirium of how a Bosnian Muslim would react if he had to accept his roots is beautiful.

I have seen some Bosnian Muslim friends of mine fly off the handle when I show the the scanned medieval documents of Bosnia's kings which make reference to Serbs as the only ethnicity in medieval Bosnia. But there have been many Bosnian muslims in literature who considered themselves Serbs. Check out Mesa Selimovic. Many "Croats" considered themselves Catholic Serbs. Check out Ivo Andric.