Schildkrötensoldat

Zoltán Kertész, blue-eyed son of a "half-Gypsy" and a day labourer, is the outsider in a small town in Serbia. As a child, he fell off his father's motorbike, and the baker, whom he couldn't lug flour sacks fast enough, beat his head bloody. Since then he has had the "temple flutter" and prefers to sit in his barn and do crossword puzzles. When the Yugoslavian civil war breaks out in 1991, the "good-for-nothing" is supposed to become first a man and then a hero in the People's Army. But Zoltán doesn't fit into the system there either. When his only friend collapses dead during a training march as a result of senseless grinding, Zoltán finally refuses to accept an order that grants all power to the strongest. Melinda Nadj Abonji tells of the gentle resistance of the imagination in a vibrant, musical language and in haunting,.