Product Description

This is a story of hope and survival amidst the Balkan tragedy. S., a teacher in a Bosnian village, is 29 when war breaks out. One day a young Serbian soldier walks into her kitchen and tells her to pack her bag. She is taken to a concentration camp where there is a mysterious room. She soon finds out what it's for - the Serbs systematically rape their prisoners there. After some months S. finds out she is pregnant. She's devastated and resolves to have the baby aborted. However, when she's finally released it's too late and she when she's evacuated to Sweden she gives birth to the child. S. changes her mind about giving it up for adoption: she realises that it's not the child's fault that it was conceived in violence and that out of the act some good - this new life - can still come.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1544573 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

Review
'A disturbingly insightful novel of love gone wrong ... gruesome and highly accomplished' TIME OUT ' Ghastly in its purist sense; read it in the kitchen if you dare' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Celebratory in tone, The Taste of a Man is also a heartfelt, if unrepentant confession ... Drakulic does not disappoint' NEW STATESMAN

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Serbo-Croation

About the Author
Slavenka Drakulic was born in Croatia. Her three novels and three non-fiction titles have been translated into many major European languages.

Customer Reviews

The real horror of the Bosnia War
I found this book in the public library today, and almost finished it already. It's one of those books you can read in one session.

It's about a young bosnian muslim woman, S.. She works in a school in a little bosnian village, when the Serbs come and deport her to a rape-camp, along with other women from her village. Somehow, she makes it to survive all this and she ends up in Zagreb/Croatia - in freedom.

But there she finds out that she's pregnant - from one of those countless men who raped her in the camp.

Drakulic succeeded to draw the atmosphere in such a camp, that you almost feel the fear of drunken soldiers coming to rape you.

It's a shocking book, one that doesn't allow you to put it away anymore. You need strong nerves to read this book, but after you read it, you'll understand the suffering of the women during the Bosnia-war much better.

It's really a book I'd recommend to everybody.