Dobrica Cosic is primarily a novelist, although he has also written political essays. Throughout his literary career he has been fascinated by the forces that have molded, influenced, and decided the fate of his countrymen in the Serbian state of the former Yugoslavia. In particular, he has attempted to show the effect that two world wars have had on his native land. Because Cosic has always been politically oriented, it was natural for him to turn to historical and social themes once he discovered his artistic bent. He was one of the first postwar novelists in Yugoslavia to broach sensitive subject matter, not so much by describing such subjects as by finding the real motives behind the actors and their actions in a period of tragic events. From World War II, in which he directly participated, he moved back to World War I, searching for the links between...