BLOODY MARKO

The history of a war criminal is revealed in reverse, beginning with his trial in today's disintegrating Yugoslavia and ending with the Austrian invasion of his childhood village. This captivating story by the author of White Rook (1990) and The Murder of Frau Schutz (1988) is told in a series of disconnected episodes in the life of Marko Renovich, who, as Mark Renault, has been extradited from the US to Yugoslavia, where he is believed to have been ``Bloody Marko,'' a WW II Nazi collaborator famed for his ruthless brutality to members of the resistance. Renovich's prosecutor is Esma Smilovich, a Moslem woman whose repulsion for the unrepentant old man becomes increasingly obsessive as the trial progresses to its climax in a horrifying encounter with a demented woman from Marko's past. Surely this is one of the worst men who ever lived. But nothing is sure except the complexity of Marko's relationships with women—ranging from the prosecutor to the wife of a Nazi general to his beautiful childhood sweetheart. Equally complex is Marko's relationship with his grindingly poor country—as well as with the various and constantly changing forces who seek to control it from within and without. A sophisticated story well told. Rattles in the brain for weeks.