Showing results by author "Gene Luke" in All Categories

They named me Dino! I grew up among the loving idiots of my hometown as the Mute. Their only drawback was to give more than what they had. At the age of 14, I opened my mouth and released the avalanche of sounds that echoed across the Balkans. After it, I couldn’t stop talking. Our national drink, the potent rectified spirits distilled from the purple plums, served for medicinal purposes to clear the cluttered minds of our townsfolk idiots. Never in the history of the kingdom of Biares, my home country did any of upheavals occurred within the Balkans.

The Artisan presents itself as a fictional memoir written in the early 1990s by Timo Tomi to his American son, who has just joined Doctors Without Borders to assist during the conflict in Yugoslavia. Timo, a finish carpenter drafted into the Royal Yugoslav Army in May 1940, is taken prisoner when Yugoslavia collapses. Transported to Germany, he longs to return to his family farm, where his partially disabled father, mother, wife, and new daughter must struggle to manage without him. Only by accepting work can he hope to get enough food to survive.