KNIFE

The author of this intense 1982 novel—its publisher's debut offering—is better known as the onetime "King of the Streets" who led student demonstrations against the repressive Serbian government in the early 1990s and remains Slobodan Milosevic's most outspoken political enemy. Knife is an ambitious political melodrama that explores the conflicted psyches of two protagonists bent on revenge against their parents' murderers: student Alija Osmanovic, who discovers he shares a troubling kinship with those he considers his bitterest enemies; and Milan Vilenjak, the Javert-like pursuer of a despicable war criminal, Atif Tatovic, who, to Milan's frustration, proves a man of conscience and a genuine penitent. The story's often discursive, and suffers from some redundancy, but has real power—and the complex, suffering figure of Tatovic has an almost Dostoyevskian intensity. A fine start for SCP, and a hopeful indication that more of the literature of the Balkan countries may be reaching us soon.