The Use of Man

Aleksandar Ti?ma’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 and flirting and gossiping with one another. Then war breaks out, changing everything. Vera, of German background and half Jewish, is sent to a concentration camp; her cousin Sep becomes a Nazi; her boyfriend Milinko, a Serb, joins the resistance. Another friend, Svedoje, triumphs over the mayhem by becoming a killer, pure and simple. And when Vera returns after the war to what remains of the place called home she finds that survival, too, has its dead ends.

Ti?ma is one of the master writers of the twentieth century, a companion to Vasily Grossman, Curzio Malaparte, and Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Writing about the savagery that erupts in war but also about the persistent terror that underlies peace, Ti?ma, more than any of his peers, speaks directly to the unspeakable cruelty of life. He does so, however, with a composure, with a respect for the singularity of human character and existence, and with bleak beauty that makes his work not only unignorable but essential. The scrupulous archaeologist of the destroyed soul, he restores its fragments to our contemplation with such art and care that we cannot turn aside.

Aleksandar Ti?ma (1923–2003) was a Serbian novelist, short-story writer, journalist, editor, translator, and poet. Having grown up in Novi Sad, Serbia, in 1944, he returned there from Budapest to join Tito’s partisan forces. Following the end of World War II he worked as a journalist for more than a decade before publishing his first literary work, the collection of poems Naseljeni svet (The Populated World) in 1956, followed by more poetry, stories, a play, critical essays, and novels. In 1976 he gained new prominence with the release of his major novel, The Use of Man; among the many recognitions he would subsequently receive are the NIN, NOLIT, and Ivo Andric awards. Between 1992 and 1995 Ti?ma went into political exile in France. Other titles of his available in English translation are The Book of Blam and Kapo.

Bernard Johnson (1933–2003) was a British scholar who served as the director of the Language Centre at the London School of Economics. He was the editor and co-translator of the first book-length collection of modern Yugoslav literature in 1970. Among the many other works he has translated from the Serbo-Croatian are The Houses of Belgrade by Borislav Pekic, Links/Karike and The Slavs Beneath Parnassus: Selected Poems by Miodrag Pavlovic, and Black Apples: Selected Poems, 1954–1987 by Slavko Mihalic.