Interview with Author Michael D. O'Brien on his new Novel - The Island of the World


A Sequel to the Best Seller Fr. Elijah is Being Contemplated

Q. Tell us about the story to give readers a sense of it.

O'Brien: The Island of the World is the story of a child born in 1933 into the turbulent world of the Balkans and tracing his life into the third millennium. The central character is Josip Lasta, the son of an impoverished school teacher in a remote village high in the mountains of the Bosnian interior. As the novel begins, World War II is underway and the entire region of Yugoslavia is torn by conflicting factions: German and Italian occupying armies, and the rebel forces that resist them - the fascist Ustashe, Serb nationalist Chetniks, and Communist Partisans. As events gather momentum, hell breaks loose, and the young and the innocent are caught in the path of great evils. Their only remaining strength is their religious faith and their families.

Q. Is this primarily a historical novel, or perhaps a political one?

O'Brien: No, it is neither, though of course history and politics play important roles in the story. Its primary focus is on persons, dramatized through the life of a person, a soul. However, the history that is part of the plot recounts accurately what happened, and as such the book may be somewhat controversial. For more than a century, the confused and highly inflammatory history of former-Yugoslavia has been the subject of numerous books, many of them rife with revisionist history and propaganda. The peoples of the Balkans live on the border of three worlds: the Islamic, the Orthodox Slavic East, and Catholic Europe, and as such they stand in the path of major world conflicts that are not only geo-political but fundamentally spiritual. This novel cuts to the core question: how does a person retain his identity, indeed his humanity, in any absolutely dehumanizing situation?

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Related Post: Wednesday, December 19, 2007, New Movie Project: Fr. Elijah
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