A devastating novel about the attrocities of WWII and the unspeakable things people did to
survive by one of Yugoslavia's great literary voices. The Book of Blam The Use of Man Kapo:
In these three unsparing novels the Yugoslav author Aleksandar Ti ma anatomized the plight of
those who survived the Second World War and the death camps only to live on in a death-haunted
world. Blam simply lucked out and can hardly face himself in the mirror. By contrast the
teenage friends in The Use of Man are condemned to live on and on while enduring every
affliction. Kapo is about Lamian who made it through Auschwitz by serving his German masters
knowing that at any moment and for any reason his special status might be revoked. But the war
is over now. Auschwitz is in the past. Lamian has settled down in the Bosnian town of Banja
Luka where he has a respectable job as a superintendent in the railyard. Everything is normal
enough. Then one day in the paper he comes on the name of Helena Lifka a woman like him a
Yugoslav and a Jew he raped in the camp. Not long after he sees her aged and ungainly Lamian
is flooded with guilt and terror. Kapo like Ti ma s other great novels is not simply a
document or an act of witness. Ti ma s terrible gift is to see with an artist s dispassionate
clarity how fear violence guilt and desire whether for life love or simple understanding
are inextricably knotted together in the human breast.
