Aleksandar Tisma belongs to a large group of European writers whose attention is intensely focused on the destruction and suffering caused by human violence and brutality. Tisma's work parallels that of writers from modernists such as James Joyce and Franz Kafka to postmodernists such as Peter Handke and Samuel Beckett in their treatment of the disintegration of identity of both individuals and societies in the modern world. But Tisma treats these issues specifically within his own historical and cultural context. Like Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski, Bertolt Brecht, Bruno Schultz, Thomas Mann, Elie Wiesel, and many others, he locates much of the difficulty of modern existence in the horrors of the Nazi devastation of Europe before and during World War II. Much of his work deals with various attempts, mainly unsuccessful, at psychological and social regeneration in the postwar Yugoslav socialist society.

Tisma's novels and short stories are frequently...