Kapo

by Aleksandar Tišma

Book Overview

A devastating novel about the attrocities of WWII, and the unspeakable things people did to survive, by one of Yugoslavia's great literary voices. A devastating novel about the attrocities of WWII,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151466939
• ISBN13: 9780151466931
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
• Length: 294 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Like a Bosnian Version of MY NAME IS EARL

I've been watching the new NBC TV comedy hit MY NAME IS EARL, created by Greg Garcia, and about halfway through last night's episode, I began flashing back on this old novel by the Serbian novelist Alex Tisma, and I started wondering if maybe, just maybe, Greg Garcia might have read this one too! The premise of the show, and the premise of the book, are eerily similar, like trying to distinguish between a couple of Monets. MY NAME IS EARL features skateboarder/actor Jason Lee as Earl Hickey, a low life piece of trailer trash who decides to change his life after winning a $100,000 lottery ticket. Flicking through TV channels, he watches a banal chat show in which TRL front man Carson Daly is interviewed about karma-what it is, and what it isn't. Earl becomes electrified at hearing the concept and decides to write down all the bad deeds he's done in his life ("Stole a car from a one-legged girl. I'm sorry") and then attempt to atone for each, confronting his own guilt of long ago. How similar to the remarkable KAPO by Tisma! In KAPO, it's 1983 in Yugoslavia, and an elderly man is reading the paper when he stumbles across the memory of a young Jewish girl whom he raped and defiled when she was his prisoner at Auschwitz. Vilko Lamian didn't start out as a bad boy; in flashbacks we see that, Jewish himself, he was forced into becoming a Kapo (prison guard) by the Nazi's internal power structure, which forced even the Jews to spy on other Jews and to torment their own brothers and sisters. Like Earl, Lamian decides to try to make amends by tracking down Helena, the woman he abused. One of countless women because he was actually a pig. Back and forth the novel goes, between past and present, and slowly we begin to understand and appreciate Tisma's slow, merciless anatomization of a man who's hit rock bottom and who wants to make amends, just as we do Earl Hickey in MY NAME IS EARL.

a human tragedy

A story of mimicry that ends up always badly.A Jewish child baptized in a roman-catholic church because his parents wanted him to feel more comfortable in his environment, grows into a student in Zagreb hiding his identity amidst his nationalistic Croatian colleagues, ends up in an infamous concentration camp in Jasenovac, Croatia, tortured by one of his former colleagues.The mimicry saves him again when he trades places with a dead Serb. But that gets him sent to Auschwitz. There he becomes a KAPO. He spies on other inmates, has more privilege than other inmates, abuses other inmates promissing them food.A mimicry is again at work after the war when he has a good governement position in Yugoslavia, being considered a "victim of Nazi terror". Pangs of conscience catch up with him though.The greatness of this book is the fact that as much as we despise him for his weakness, we feel sorry for him. And all the while we ask ourselves: "How can I be sure that I would be stronger in such an extreme situation". This is a powerfull book with deeply human message. I couldn't put it down and spent a sleepless night until I finished it...

fear and loathing

Much has been written detailing the experiences of the victims of the Holocaust, but there is less fiction dealing with the minds of the perpetrators and collaborators. In "Kapo" Tisma has presented a glimpse into the mind of one such collaborator. This amazing portrait of self-loathing and paranoia held me transfixed like a rabbit in caught in the glare of headlights. I highly recommend "Kapo" for anyone who wants to be kept up late at night in a state of agitation