The Use of Man

Tisma’s The Use of Man is a stunning book. I have seldom read anything that authentically conveys the feel of that nightmare-the war, the Holocaust, the brutal aftermath, and the almost equally brutal dreariness of a provincial town frozen in time, caught between Mitteleuropa and the Balkans. The angle of vision-call it compassionate detachment-accounts for some of the impact, but the most impressive achievement is the range of characters. Understated, they all come to life, or to death-in-life, on their own terms. – Ernst Pawel The novel is tough, terse, with episodes that will turn your stomach; yet, because it is written in a style of luminous detachment, it becomes hauntingly poetic and even humorous in its bitter ironies. It is a novel whose power is on a scale normally associated with our favorite (dead) authors. Whether you like what he’s got to say or not, the world will not look quite the same after you’ve read this book. – Toronto Star The remarkable trio [The Use of Man is the first] make up a Balkan bible presided over by an ironic vision of the imagination, capable of envisioning utter barbarity but not the expiation for sins, dwelling on delusions of paranoia rather than traditional community. – Bill Marx, The Boston Globe Aleksandar Tisma may appear to be writing yet another novel dealing with the Second World War devastation of Europe. He is not. It is an amazingly fresh and profoundly wise piece of writing. He brings the reticence of the scalpel to an examination of the nature of violence. He probes with clarity and detachment the secret areas of the human psyche where motives for violence are born. This is a seminal work of post-war fiction, and Bernard Johnson has produced not only an exemplary rendering from Serbo-Croatian, but something of a classic in English. – Branko Gorjup, Ottawa Citizen Man has no noble use in The Use of Man, Aleksandar Tisma’s exceptional novel about the Nazi conquest of Yugoslavia… Mr. Tisma’s deliberate unfolding of his characters’ fates serves to illustrate the novel’s underlying premise: Yugoslavia’s wartime experience-everything from the deportation of the Jews to Tito’s Communism-resulted in his country’s inevitable ruin. That Mr. Tisma manages to convey such large historical ideas without sacrificing the story’s drama attests to his abilities as a gifted and humane writer. – Barbara Finkelstein, The New York Times As [Tisma] probes the complexities and ambiguities of people’s behavior under these terrible circumstances, he is unrelenting in his quest for the truth yet compassionate in his judgments of individuals. – Merle Rubin, The Wall Street Journal A bleak and moving account of the tender lives of the damned. – Kirkus Reviews A masterly evocation of fortitude, resignation, turpitude and sheer bloody-minded self-preservation in the face of fear, violent repression, and leaden-jawed dogma. – The Times (London) This novel is written with an undeluded toughness of spirit, the spirit of a European who has seen just about everything there is to see and doesn’t blink or evade. The prose is firm and the structure is tight. Tisma maintains a consistent tone of austere detachment, yet one ends with a great deal of pity for his characters. Reading the novel, I felt I was privileged to meet a distinguished European writer. – Irving Howe

Aleksandar Tisma (1924-2003)

Born in Vojvodina, a former province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was incorporated into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after World War I, Tisma’s father was a Serb from a peasant background, and his mother was middle-class and Jewish. The family lived comfortably, and Tisma received a good education. In 1941, Hungary annexed Vojvodina. The following year, during the Hungarian regime’s murderous pogroms that killed some 3,000 inhabitants, primarily Serbs and Jews, the Tismas were spared.

After fighting with the Yugoslav partisans, Tisma studied philosophy at Belgrade University and pursued a career in journalism. In 1949, he joined the editorial staff of a publishing house, where he remained until his retirement in 1980.

Tisma published his first story, “Ibika’s House,” in 1951, followed by the novels Guilt and In Search of the Dark Girl, and a collection of stories, Violence. In the 1970s and ‘80s, he gained international recognition with his Novi Sad trilogy: The Book of Blam (1971), about a survivor of the Hungarian occupation of Novi Sad; The Use of Man (1976), which follows a group of friends through World War II and after; and Kapo (1987), the story of a Jew raised as a Catholic who becomes a guard in a German concentration camp.

Tisma moved to France after the outbreak of war and collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s but returned to Novi Sad in 1995, where he spent his last years.

Bernard Johnson (1933-2003)

Johnson was affiliated with the Language Centre at the London School of Economics for many years. In 1970, he edited and translated the first anthology of modern Yugoslav literature. Throughout his career, he distinguished himself as one of the most active translators of Serbo-Croatian poetry and prose into English.

Claire Messud

Messud is the author of four novels and a book of novellas. Her novel The Emperor’s Children was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and selected as one of the ten best books of 2006 by The New York Times. Her most recent novel is The Woman Upstairs. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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