Homecoming

By Natasha Radojčić

Book Overview

When Halid, a Muslim war hero, returns home after the Bosnian War, he finds that his own battles have just begun. Although his village was spared from heavy combat, it is a panorama of scarcity and decay. Over the course of three days, Halid wanders in search of those who remain. Altered, disoriented, and confused, he experiences his town as a shifting landscape of new alliances and old grievances. There is no room for error in this time of upheaval, and Halid's missteps threaten to pull him into a spiral of insanity and tragedy. This vivid, lyrical debut novel resonates with the timeless folktale voice of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the psychological intensity of Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568582390
• ISBN13: 9781568582399
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.0" x 0.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Original and hearbreaking

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.

WHAT COMES AFTER THE WAR?

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.

Engrossing and realistic tale from recent history.

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.

Painted Bird

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.

Vivid and powerful...takes you to a place few have ever been

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.