Aleksandar Tišma

"Aleksandar Tisma's The Use of Man is an unsparing and unequaled reckoning with the destruction of human life, self, and being in war, a book about a particular time and place, World War II and the Balkans, but nonetheless for all times. Set on the banks in the multiethnic town of Novi Sad on the Yugoslavian border with Hungary, the novel tracks the intertwined lives of a group of young people, high-school classmates, accustomed to studying and dancing...