There is so much trauma in our world, and there is no generation spared by the pain of wars. It was always like this and it looks like there is no end to the cycle of violence of trauma. How one can go away of it, succeeding to win over fears and panics, the ghosts of the past always haunting?
Dancing on Knives, the debut novel by Joanne Rush, takes a different take on how present and past can find a way to survive for the sake of a different future.
Laura, a brilliant student who fled Bosnia during the Balkan wars, fell in love with Adam, a British diplomat that she will follow to his assignment to Serbia. There, he is set to find the war criminal Ratko Mladic, while Laura is spending her time in the capital city of the power that dislocated her and murdered her people. Family figures and episodes of the trauma are coming back to her, mixing reality and past in a fluid persistant way, distorting the reality and almost taking over her control over her own life. Will she be able to start anew and silence the dark legacy of war?
This is a very evocative and important book inspired by traumatic violent events. The wars in former Yugoslavia, a genocide taking place in the very heart of Europe, that no one was able to stop is just another shame for humanity. When I take a break and think about all the many horrors we are experiencing, reading about or directly affected, it just makes me angry. But, on the other hand, being angry is not the solution, as it destroys the future. The figures of the murdered may haunt us, but we need to make first pace with ourselves.
Laura´s search for meaning may open up new ways to cope with such traumatic events. Dancing on Knives will, for sure, stay with me for a very long time and I am already adding it to my bibliography of books about conflicts and trauma in the XXth century.
Rating: 5 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own
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