Saturday, July 29, 2006
White Hot Hate
In Sarajevo Blues, written under the siege of 1992, Bosnian author Semezdin Mehmedinovic describes the psychopathic brutality consciously constructed by sadists like Radovan Karadzic, whom he once knew as a middling writer of children's poetry. As an editor of the underground press at the time, Mehmedinovic observed first hand how one of the longest-standing, ethnically tolerant, and religiously diverse cities in the world was turned into a hellish nightmare where he encountered such absurdities as being held up at gun point by one of his former soccer buddies turned Chetnik.
Subtle changes like the appearance of gray hairs on his ten year old son led Mehmedinovic to speculate on the vulnerability of all mass communication societies to the scientific application and strategic use of white hot hate. For its poetry, for its inside view, for its honesty, Sarajevo Blues deserves a broad hearing.
Subtle changes like the appearance of gray hairs on his ten year old son led Mehmedinovic to speculate on the vulnerability of all mass communication societies to the scientific application and strategic use of white hot hate. For its poetry, for its inside view, for its honesty, Sarajevo Blues deserves a broad hearing.
