From a Violent Past towards a 
Global Ethics? Twentieth Century 
Atrocities in Select Novels of the 
Twenty-First Century
Werner Wintersteiner
Alps-Adriatic University Klagenfurt, Universitätsstrasse 65, 9020 Klagenfurt, Austria
Werner.wintersteiner@aau.at
The relationship between ethics and literature has always been a contested one. 
I firstly discuss this relationship, arguing that literature is not ethical per se, 
which is the reason why it can serve ethical purposes. Secondly, I state, in line 
with Martha Nussbaum, why any ethical thinking today has to refer to global 
ethics. Drawing from this, I present three recent novels, all of which deal with 
fundamental twentieth century atrocities: Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie, The 
French Art of War by Alexis Jenni and The Walnut Mansion by Miljenko Jergović. 
They pose philosophical and ethical questions about war, violence and the great 
ruptures of civilisation. They are a component of world literature in the sense that 
the plot, and the ethical reflection triggered by this, is not related to a single nation 
state, but to the global situation. The authors make use of a historical profile 
encompassing a period of 60 to 100 years of narrated time. In this way, they can 
make a connection between personal and historical-political development visible. 
But this connection is less ensconced in the material history of the facts than in an 
ideology and “culture” that is responsible for the permanence of war and violent 
conflicts. The involvement of the characters in conflicts proves to be more than 
just a matter of character and of personal attitudes; it is also the result of social 
constellations. The personal and the political are never separated, which in no 
way releases the individuals from their responsibilities.
Keywords: literature and ethics / world literature / twenty­first century / novel / aesthetic 
autonomy / social engagement / Shamsie, Kamila / Jenni, Alexis / Jergović, Miljenko
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Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 40.2 (2017)
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Ethics versus aesthetics? [“… and more isn’t necessary”]
In his commemorative speech at the opening of the Salzburg Festival 
2016, the philosopher Konrad Liessman put forward, with reference to 
Hölderlin’s poem To The Fates, the thesis that art, and in particular lit­
erature, does not have to be explicitly political in order to have a politi­
cal effect. With this statement, he posed a series of rhetorical questions:
Shouldn’t art itself despair in light of this state of the world, and if not fall 
silent, at least raise its voice in a political sense, shouldn’t it intervene, at least 
draw attention to, transcend itself to point to those unbearable situations, 
shouldn’t it take rousing action instead of worshipping beauty? (Liessmann)
The answer to this is that art, simply due to its existence, is already a 
critique of the world – “and more isn’t necessary” – as the motto and 
the title of his speech, with an allusion to Hölderlin’s poem, state:
In this rejection of the world, in this focus on art itself, there is a critique that 
does not intervene in an actionistic way, does not even name grievances, but 
instead retreats into a completely different sphere in which only one thing 
counts: the successful work of art […]. And because of this, has art not always 
been, in a dual sense, a criticism and an objection to reality due to its sheer 
existence? Due to it insisting on this principle of creating from freedom, and 
due to it wanting to give credit to the criteria for success only to its own aspi­
rations – to no other earthly, but also to no godly power. (Liessmann)
Anyone who dared to object to this position would quickly be accused 
of neglecting the aesthetic dimension of art in favour of a dull moralis­
tic or political “message.” And yet, Liessmann’s statement is only half 
the truth. For it is not even about racking one’s brains over what art 
should or must do. It is quite simply about determining what art does, 
and what this means; what questions or problems arise therefrom. And 
indeed, there are a great many authors that do not stop at Hölderlin’s 
“and more isn’t necessary,” but who instead write contemporarily or 
historically critical texts, whose works do not exclude ethical and politi­
cal topics, but explicitly address them. And that is precisely why there 
is this controversy that Liessman hints at.
Art and politics, ethics and aesthetics – to what extent these are 
compatible is an old dispute that is once again being revived today. For 
after all, it is a contradiction that is inextricably connected to the litera­
ture of modernity as autonomous art: if it is part of the essential nature 
of literature in modernity, the age of the aesthetic regime (Rancière), to 
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be “free,” not dependent on any economical or political power, and 
only subject to the laws of aesthetics, then how can it serve ethical or 
political goals? This contradiction has emerged in ever new forms in lit­
erary and political debates since the end of the eighteenth century – for 
example, as a dichotomy between l’art pour l’art and literature engagée, 
as a plea for or against the “ivory tower,” but also within the encamp­
ment of political art – for example, in the expressionism debate, the so­
called “Brecht­Lukács debate.” The opponents and proponents of the 
ethical and political dimensions of literature have debated at times very 
simply, and sometimes also with the sophistication with which Sartre’s 
essay What Is Literature? was penned, or Maurice Blanchot’s L’Espace 
littéraire or La part du feu, Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory or Rancière’s 
Politique de la littérature, or the arguments of the deconstructivists in 
Derrida’s cohort, or the moral philosophers in Martha Nussbaum’s, 
Wayne Booth’s or Soshana Felman’s following. As one can see, our 
topic – literature, ethics and politics – has a long history.
It is quite impossible to set out these debates in all their ramifi­
cations here, and I have not yet even differentiated between ethical 
and political questions at this point. However, it is important to me 
to locate my own stance on this question in the context of this great 
debate, and not to act as if it were possible to assume a completely 
new and independent position here. In essence, my line of argument 
will be that I simultaneously acknowledge and reject the contradiction 
between ethics and aesthetics; that I do not deny it, but that I refuse 
to side with either party; I make the assertion that here, we are dealing 
with a productive tension that need not necessarily be overcome once 
and for all in one way or another, and that we need aesthetic autonomy 
precisely for ethical reasons. I will summarize my position in the fol­
lowing contradictory statement:
– Literature is not about ethics, it is about aesthetics;
–  Literature is always about ethics, precisely because it is about aes­
thetics;
– In our globalizing societies, literature might herald a global ethics.
Perhaps, however, it is quite useful to contemplate in which historical 
moments this debate about the ethical function of art flares up, and 
which societal problems it tries to come to terms with in this way. 
For obviously, this subject matter has a more explosive nature in cer­
tain moments than in others. One such important moment was the 
First World War. The war was also experienced as a collapse of val­
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ues. What followed was a general discreditation of moral authorities 
and political institutions as well as of science. Literature, on the other 
hand, was viewed as a place where one could still meaningfully discuss 
ethical questions; aesthetics had remained ethically unobjectionable – 
and this despite the moral discreditation of many writers as well (see 
Mayer). After the Second World War, there was a similar discussion 
surrounding the 1968 movement, with a re­launching of the demand 
for political art. A further historical moment was, for example, the late 
1980s, in particular in the eastern part of central Europe, when people 
saw in literature a power to aesthetically delegitimise and overcome the 
already shaky communist system. Today, one whole generation later, 
the issue has gained meaning once more, initially originating from the 
USA and France. Perhaps now, in view of the contradiction between 
the so­called European peace project and the bleak political reality, we 
are once again searching for ethical foundations, for art as the ultimate­
ly least ethically exhausted entity, that is to say for a reflective medium 
of reality that is not already completely corrupted by this reality?
The literary work of art as a medium of ethical reflection must not 
be mistaken for the problematic pedagogic stance that wishes to dis­
til moralistic statements from literature. Instead, we must understand 
ethics as a meta­theory of morality – not rules of behaviour therefore, 
but rather practices of how one could arrive at substantiated rules (see, 
for example, Ricœur). With this, we have already made an important 
differentiation from a doctrinaire political literary criticism and similar 
such “engaged” literature that does not conceive of writing as a process 
of searching, but as something that already knows right from the start 
what its statement is.
Thus it can be seen that contemporary authors are increasingly as­
suming a cosmopolitan position when they discuss ethical political 
questions. It is an ethical reflection that also considers their own point 
of view and that takes into account the fact that considering global 
interconnections, the ethical discussion cannot seal itself off nationally 
either (see Nussbaum, For Love of Country?).
The main question for an ethical perspective on literature – no mat­
ter whether from the point of view of the artist or the critic – however, 
is the handling of the contradiction between aesthetic openness on the 
one hand, and an intended message or clearly interpretable statement 
on the other. While the moral philosophers, such as Nussbaum & Co., 
with all due interpretational caution, ultimately argue hermeneuti­
cally and do indeed seek to recognize an objectively distilled message 
from texts, the representatives of deconstruction, those whom Liesbeth 
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Korthals Altes describes as followers of a “déconstructivisme de gauche” 
(44), surmise the “illegibility” of texts and establish the ethos of the 
text as being beyond any moralistic or political message.1 The question 
is whether these approaches succeed at finding “une voie médiane entre 
le relativisme épistémologique et éthique auquel semble contrainte la 
postmodernité, et le retour à des notions naïves du sens, du sujet et des 
valeurs” (ibid. 47). Paul Ricœur’s approach, which rejects several of 
Nussbaum’s postulates without lapsing into absolute relativism, seems 
to have more success with this.
L’originalité de Ricœur est […] qu’il n’y a pas vraiment opposition entre l’es­
thétique et l’éthique, entre une lecture qui serait hors de l’éthique, d’une part, 
et un domaine pratique d’autre part, soumis à l’éthique, où il ne subsisterait 
rien du jeu imaginatif, esthétique. Il les voit liés dans une “tension fructueuse” 
(ibid. 51–52).
Ricœur assumes there is a “fruitful tension” between ethics and aes­
thetics that binds the two. Aesthetics is the corrective measure for all­
too speedy certainties and a complacent one­dimensional worldview: 
“L’expérience esthétique s’avère ainsi indispensable à la disposition 
éthique d’un Moi qui est à la fois constant dans son ‘maintien de soi’ et 
précaire, conscient d’être habité par l’‘autre’” (ibid. 52).
The dialogic character of the work of art, which – as Sartre (1948) 
already knew – only unfolds its potential through its reception, is based 
on an ethics of dialogue or of “responsivity” (Mitterer) that in turn al­
lows a self­reflection of the reading subject in the medium of aesthetics.
The dilemma of how a clear statement, a “message” is to be rec­
onciled with the aesthetic and therefore communicative openness of 
the work of art, however, must continually be solved anew. After all, 
in doing so, multi­perspectivity and thereby interpretative ambiguity 
must be given the attention they deserve. Jean Bessière opines the same, 
when he says of a completely analogous contradiction:
De fait, ce paradoxe n’est recevable qu’à une seule condition: que l’œuvre le 
reconnaisse comme tel, qu’elle en fasse un moyen de la question de la valeur, et 
que cette reconnaissance soit, dans l’œuvre, rendue manifeste au lecteur. Grâce 
à ces dernières précisions, on entre, de fait, dans le jeu de la réflexivité. (5)
1 Of course Nussbaum also approximates Ricœur’s position in certain formula­
tions. See, for example, her wording “that we grasp the practical content of a literary 
text adequately only when we attentively study the forms in which it is embodied and 
expressed; and that, in turn, we have not correctly described the literary form of, say a 
James novel if we have not asked what sense of life it expresses” (Love’s Knowledge 172). 
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With this, the ethical dimension is installed in the text itself, and 
evolves in the reception on the part of the reader. However, this means 
that there is no clear­cut set of values or “ethics of the text” that one 
could “objectively” describe, and that one cannot expect texts to teach 
us how “to live well” (Nussbaum) either. Thus, in concordance with 
Ricœur’s concept of literature as a “laboratoire,” Vincent Jouve is also 
of the opinion that:
La littérature se présente moins comme un catalogue de modèles à suivre que 
comme un laboratoire. Si la philosophie peut s’y intéresser, ce n’est pas en tant 
que réservoir d’un savoir éthique et moral, mais comme champ de possibles 
qui n’a d’autres limites que celles de l’imagination et où, en conséquence, l’ex­
périmentation est plus libre que dans la réalité. (6)
The work in this “laboratoire” is an interplay between meeting and 
distance. On the one hand, it means delving into the text, allowing 
oneself to be seduced, it is emotional identification; but this is balanced 
out by the critical analysis that observes the text “from the outside.” In 
place of the Nussbaum­inspired “teaching us to live well,” Ricœur’s 
maxim could be: “plus une œuvre m’apprend à bien (me) lire, plus elle 
est éthique” (Korthals Altes 53). In this sense, ethics in literature means 
not to give answers, but to ask questions.
To sum up: when ethics and aesthetics collude, great works of art 
can arise. Hereby, however, aesthetics is not some sort of packaging for 
a previously established statement or idea, but it is the medium of an 
exploratory movement and an attempt to say things that cannot be said 
in any other way. Milan Kundera formulated this thought, with refer­
ence to Hermann Broch, in all its radicality: “The sole raison d’être of a 
novel is to discover what can only be discovered by a novel. A novel that 
does not discover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. 
Knowledge is the novel’s only morality.” (Kundera 6, original emphasis). 
The ethical reflection on the part of the readers is not forced by the text, 
but is instead supported by the text’s dialogic offerings. This is success­
ful when texts are not “smooth,” but when something irritating, or 
even something contradictory is expressed in them, when they expose 
the paradox of which Bessière speaks. The aesthetic means for this can 
be so different and diverse that it is impossible to draw up a poetics of 
this artistic openness.
Which aesthetic means can be implemented in order to stimulate 
a global ethical discussion is what the following exploration aims to 
show, with the help of examples.
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(Global) ethical reflection in the contemporary novel
All three of the following examples are an objection to the argument 
arising from l’art pour l’art, which states that every type of art that 
explicitly broaches the subject of ethical or political questions is less 
valuable in an artistic sense. These are literarily complex works that 
make several central events and social developments of the last century 
the subject of discussion. They pose philosophical and ethical ques­
tions with direct reference to war, violence and the great collapses of 
civilisation in the twentieth century that continue to haunt us. Even if 
politics plays an important part in these works, the real questions are 
of an ethical nature.
However, these are texts that do not teach, but instead narrate, con­
front us with stories which, through what they tell and what they do 
not tell, discuss ethical attitudes and also demand such an attitude from 
us as readers. These are texts that pose questions in various ways, that is 
to say they question what they recount. In any case, these are not texts 
that “ambush” their readers and force a particular perspective onto 
them, but instead they demand answers and make answers possible. 
These are texts that do not directly, such as in the form of positives 
heroes and heroines as figures to identify with or by means of the ex­
plicit opinion of the narrative voice, or indirectly, in the form of clearly 
negative heroes and heroines, carry out moralistic evaluations. On the 
contrary, the “heroes” themselves are problematic, they fall short of 
their own aspirations, or they turn out to be powerless against that 
which they recognize as false. Presented with their story embedded in a 
complete network of relationships and experiences, which they neither 
perceive, let alone understand, on occasion the acting figures them­
selves know less about the world in which they live than the readers. 
But these heroes and heroines are always entangled in the social con­
flicts and struggles of their time, and they are, accordingly, more or less 
aware of this. They repeatedly have to make ethical decisions, and their 
success as well as their failure is what constitutes the narrative material.
All three novels are a component of world literature in the sense that 
the storyline, and in particular the ethical reflection triggered by this, is 
not related to a single nation state, but (to varying extents) to the global 
situation. The depiction of this world takes place to varying degrees 
in the three novels, but always dominatingly, from the perspective of 
the individual figures, who, however, are thought of with more or less 
sympathy from the explicit or implicit narrative voice. But never are we 
sold an objectified worldview as the truth; the positions always remain 
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“undefended,” exposed to objection and opposition – not just to the 
judgement of the readers, but also to objection within the novel itself. 
This is a significant component of their literary ethics.
Regardless of these similarities in ethical behaviour, the selected 
texts differ in an elemental way even in their subject matter, and in the 
basic geographical and political conditions:
–  A novel in which the main characters commute between various 
countries: it is one of those countries, that “always fight wars, but 
always somewhere else” (Shamsie 261) – the USA; furthermore, 
the country that aggressively subjugated other countries itself, but 
then became a victim of the nuclear bomb attacks – Japan; and 
the “hostile brothers” Pakistan and India, who in their rivalry do 
not shy away from atomic threats either;
–  One novel concerns itself with a country that not only emerged 
as a colonial power, but also became a victim of Hitler’s aggres­
sion – France;
–  Finally, one literary work takes place in a country that was formed 
after the First World War and was invaded by the Nazis in the 
Second World War, was forced to make great sacrifices and waged 
a war of liberation; a country which decades later, however, dis­
solved in a bloody civil war itself – Yugoslavia.
But the three pieces are also distinguished by means of the chosen narra­
tive perspective and the narrative style, to put it briefly: by the respective 
aesthetic means. The linking of the personal with the political, which is 
present throughout, is accentuated very differently; the question of the 
responsibility of the protagonists stands out to varying degrees.
Kamila Shamsie: Burnt Shadows
In her novel Burnt Shadows (2009), the Pakistani author Kamila 
Shamsie tells the violent history of the twentieth century using the ex­
ample of one of the largest ruptures of civilisation, the dropping of 
two atomic bombs over Japan. In her novel, the author draws a com­
mon thread between the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the 
nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, all the way to the ter­
rorist attacks of September 11th 2001 and the US detention camps in 
Guantánamo. Here, however, she is less concerned with the military 
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and political events than their influence on the attitudes and mentali­
ties of the people in the respective countries.
The title plays on the fact that the heat of the atomic bomb vapo­
rised people so quickly that their bodies remained only as shadows in 
the ground – a macabre symbol of the destructive power of the bomb. 
The content of the story: Konrad, a German pacifist, who has just fallen 
in love with the young Japanese woman Hiroko in Nagasaki, becomes 
a victim of the atomic bomb. She, on the other hand, survives and finds 
refuge with the German­American family of her boyfriend in Delhi. 
There she falls in love anew, with a Muslim Indian, and marries him. 
The division of India forces the couple to emigrate to Pakistan. Years 
go by. Her grown(­up) son Raza attracts the attention of the American 
secret services due to various circumstances. In the end, it is Kim, the 
granddaughter of Hiroko’s American friend from Konrad’s family, 
who denounces Raza to the CIA out of fear he could be a terrorist. He 
is seized and now faces an uncertain fate in Guantánamo.
The novel shows, not only in the course of action but also in the 
symbolism used, how the protagonists are inextricably involved in 
the geopolitical conflicts. Hiroko’s back is burned during the atom­
ic bomb attack, “three charcoal­coloured birdshaped burns on her 
back” (65); ever since, these parts of her body are numb and insensi­
tive. This reminder is burnt into her, and it determines her life. The 
dark birds, to which an entire section of the novel is dedicated, will 
not let her go.
The clash of differing moral concepts and values becomes clearest in 
the confrontation between Hiroko and Kim; it is not so much a con­
flict between generations as it is between nations, for the people cannot 
escape from the cage of their nationally­oriented way of thinking. With 
this, Shamsie shows that it is not simply about individual morals, but 
about fundamental societal attitudes. When she accuses Kim, Hiroko 
accuses the whole of American society:
When Konrad first heard of the concentration camps he said you have to 
deny people their humanity in order to decimate them. You don’t. […] You 
just have to put them in a little corner of the big picture. In the big picture of 
the Second World War, what was seventy­five thousand more Japanese dead? 
Acceptable, that’s what it was. In the big picture of threats to America, what is 
one Afghan? Expendable. Maybe he’s guilty, maybe not. Why risk it? Kim, you 
are the kindest, most generous woman I know. But right now, because of you, 
I understand for the first time how nations can applaud when their govern­
ments drop a second nuclear bomb. (275)
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Kamila Shamsie tells the story of a global person, from whose fate one 
can read global threads of connection. The novelty here is the post­
colonial gaze that Shamsie directs at the US and the western world as 
a whole. Although her novel starts with the Second World War that 
originated in Germany, and initially a German man is at the fore­
front, Europe no longer plays any role in her narratives – the European 
breaches of civilisation remain only symbolically present as “burnt­out 
shadows.” The author is concerned with the problems of the current 
day from an Asia­Pacific point of view. Here, she comes to a horrify­
ing realization, which in fact is relevant for Europe after all, namely 
the insight that the basic mental attitude that made the construction 
and dropping of the bomb possible in the first place remains in effect 
and makes further collapses of civilisation still possible. One example 
for this is offered by the following scene, in which the American Kim 
explains to her Japanese­Pakistani friend Hiroko why she regarded a 
Muslim with distrust:
Kim stood up, and walked a few steps towards Hiroko.
“If I did look at him and see the man who killed my father, isn’t that under­
standable? I’m not saying it’s OK, but you have to say you understand.”
“Should I look at you and see Harry Truman?”
Kim’s eyes first widened, then narrowed. Was that supposed to be a trump 
card? Ridiculous, and insulting. Her own family had lost one of its own in 
Nagasaki; Konrad’s death was the most vivid story of terror she had grown up 
with. (ibid. 273–274)
This is, as is the entire novel, a clear post­colonial challenge of the west­
ern, especially North American perspective. But obviously, this is not 
accompanied by a trite, clear division of good and evil. For Konrad, a 
victim of the atomic bomb attack in Nagasaki, belonged to Kim’s fam­
ily, at the same time as being Hiroko’s fiancé, an insoluble entangle­
ment. In this way, on the one hand, we are on Hiroko’s side, who 
embodies post­colonial criticism, but on the other hand, we can also 
understand Kim’s feelings, while we simultaneously distance ourselves 
from her when she lacks empathy for Hiroko, the victim of the bomb, 
and depreciates her answer as a strategic game (“trump card”). The fact 
that Kim is portrayed as quite likeable, and that she is also amiable 
towards the main protagonist Hiroko and is friends with her, makes 
this dilemma more complex, demanding and realistic, both aestheti­
cally and ethically. Indeed, ethics and aesthetics do not actually have to 
form a contradiction.
Werner Wintersteiner:     From a Violent Past towards a Global Ethics? Twentieth Century Atrocities … 
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Alexis Jenni: The French Art of War
The novel addresses a similarly long time period as Burnt Shadows, 
namely from Hitler’s occupation of France until the present day in the 
new millennium. It also focuses on key political events, especially on 
the wars that France waged in this time. Here, low­threshold forms of 
violence such as the racist riots in the banlieues or the militaristic youth 
education are made a theme of discussion just as much as conflict­
related violence itself.
With the very first sentence, a “tone” is set that will be character­
istic for the continuing “melody” – the inseparable fusion of the po­
litical and private spheres: “Les débuts de 1991 furent marqués par les 
préparatifs de la guerre du Golfe et les progrès de ma totale irresponsi­
bilité” (Jenni 9).
The decisive factor in this novel is, in fact, not the depiction of the 
big wartime events. That would be too banal, as the author himself rea­
sons through one of his main characters: “Les événements posent une 
question que son récit ne résout pas” (52). That is why he resorts to a 
trick: we find out about the life story of the main character, Victorien 
Salagnon, who has participated in all these wars – from the Second 
World War, to the Vietnam War, to the colonial war in Algeria – as 
a soldier, but not directly from him himself. Instead, Salagnon tells 
his life story to a narrator (who remains unnamed), his much younger 
friend and art student who, in turn, imparts it to the readers. This 
provides us with an original structure of the work from two threads: 
the Roman, that is the life of Salagnon, told in the third person, and 
the Commentaires, in which the narrator discloses his own story, the 
encounter with Salagnon and his observations on the political events in 
the first person narrative. It is a broken, subjectivised account of the big 
story, in which precisely the person from whom we find everything out, 
our sole middleman, remains nameless and in the dark.
The novel thrives on the continuous intertwining of small and large 
events; the protagonists recognize the same patterns in banal everyday 
scenes as in the great waging of war. In this way, the novel becomes a 
history of mentalities and a political history in one – and this in the 
mirror of the reflections of a person who is not particularly likeable, a 
good­for­nothing and a flaneur, who precisely because of this, however, 
musters up enough time to engage himself in observation, listening, 
contemplation and in spontaneous encounters. For what Jenni com­
mands masterfully are the reflective monologues of the narrator, which 
in the way in which he tells them turn everyday occurrences into dem­
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onstrations of large­scale politics; likewise, the dialogues and debates 
that comment on many key scenes of the French war history of the 
twentieth century. This means that episode by episode, an overall pic­
ture of a (French) society is formed that is thoroughly permeated by a 
culture of war and violence, in which even children in history lessons 
find out not only the facts, but are, for example with the aid of Caesar’s 
Gallic War, “instructed in the art of war.”
I wish to go into more detail in one scene here, for, precisely in all its 
inconspicuousness and banality, it is perhaps the most interesting from 
an ethical point of view. It plays out in a bureau de tabac, where the nar­
rator buys a newspaper. The newspaper seller, who is, incidentally, not 
reading a tabloid, but a quality newspaper [“On ne peut plus compter 
sur les caricatures pour se protéger des gens,” as the narrator sarcasti­
cally and self­critically admits (192)], says to him, without clarifying 
his sentences in more detail, with reference to an anti­racist measure of 
the government:
“C’est avant qu’il aurait fallu agir. […] S’il y a dix ans, quand il était encore 
temps, on avait frappé fort sur ceux qui bougeaient, on aurait la paix mainte­
nant.” (193)
Il n’affirmait rien de précis, je comprenais ce qu’il disait, et cette compréhen­
sion seule valait déjà l’approbation. Il le savait. Nous sommes unies par la 
langue, et lui jouait des pronomes sans jamais rien préciser. Il savait que je ne 
dirais rien, à moins d’entrer en conflit avec lui, et il m’attendait de pied ferme. 
[…] Il avait reconnu en moi un enfant de la Ire République de Gauche, qui se 
refuse de dire et se refuse à voir. […]
La pourriture coloniale revient dans les mêmes mots. “La paix pour dix ans”, 
il l’avait dit devant moi. Ici, comme là­bas. Et ce “ils” ! Tous les Français l’em­
ploient de connivence. Une complicité discrète unit les Français qui com­
prennent sans qu’on le précise ce que ce “ils” désigne. […] Comprendre „ils“ 
fait être complice. (194–195)
The narrator realises immediately that a classic phrase is being quoted 
here, an intellectual figure that occupies an especially prominent place 
in the inventory of French racism. I have given you peace for ten years; 
with these words, in 1945, General Duval justified the massacre com­
mitted by the French army of the Algerian civilian population in Sétif. 
But although he is aware of this, the narrator does not react, does not 
put the newspaper seller in his place. He feels caught out, because he 
understands him, and this makes him helpless.
We are dealing here with a particularly interesting point, a multiply 
complex ethical discourse. Firstly, the reminder of the French colonial 
massacre is evoked, an exceptionally dissonant tone within the context 
Werner Wintersteiner:     From a Violent Past towards a Global Ethics? Twentieth Century Atrocities … 
45
of the glorious hero’s tale of the liberation of France from National 
Socialism in 1944/1945. Already, this is an important opposing voice 
against the official version that would like to present the Grande Nation 
exclusively as a victim of fascism. Secondly, here, a link is established 
between the colonial wars and the racist discourses of the present – a 
language­sensitive critique that shows that the racist patterns of think­
ing are still based on the old colonial we­them distinctions. And final­
ly – and this is surely the most important point – the fact that the nar­
rator self­critically admits his own failures, where a courageous inter­
vention would have been called for. It is this personal level that actually 
makes the other two criticisms truly credible. The self­criticism is what 
first leads beyond the cheap, pure ideology criticism, which is indeed 
often articulated with a feeling of self­righteousness and arrogance. It is 
only this personal involvedness that turns the political criticism into a 
scene of ethical complexity.
One dilemma, however, remains to be noted. With its detailed de­
piction of France’s culture of violence and traditions of war, embodied 
by a male warrior caste, the novel still remains rooted in that against 
which it rebels. Salagnon is portrayed in a thoroughly complex manner 
as a soldier and artist simultaneously, but even he is, after all, just one 
version of the warrior. With this, the author puts exactly the protago­
nists of this warrior mentality at the forefront – other, deviating char­
acters, especially female figures, such as Salagnon’s wife Eurydice or 
the new (Arabic) girlfriend of the narrator, on the other hand, remain 
very vague and predominantly voiceless. This is where a post­colonial 
and feminist interpretation of the novel could pick up. The aesthetic 
question of how one can afford the meticulous depiction of that which 
one criticises without falling into the trap of suppressing everything 
else, everything resistant, and above all the perspective of the victims, 
however, must also first be clarified in such an interpretation as this.
Miljenko Jergović: Dvori od oraha
In many ways, Miljenko Jergović’s Dvori od oraha (The Walnut 
Mansion)2 offers a counterpoint to the two previous novels. Certainly, 
this is also a novel that tells the story of an entire century at once, from 
1900 to 2000, and indeed here too, like it or not, the people are also 
2 Unlike the two other books, this description is not based on the reading of the 
original, but on the German translation.
PKn, letnik 40, št 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2017
46
implicated in the greater history and politics. This is narrated using the 
story of a Yugoslavian family, namely chronologically back­to­front. 
The novel, therefore, begins in the present and moves further back­
wards with each chapter, from the death of the main character Regina 
all the way back to her birth.
But in contrast to the other two works, here the protagonists are not 
in the least bit concerned about passionately commentating, let alone 
shaping the political occurrences. The people suffer politics, almost like 
an illness, and they try to escape it, which, however, not all are able to 
do. This goes hand in hand with a completely different kind of charac­
ter. Unlike Jenni’s novel, which portrays almost only men, in Jergović’s 
novel, the women are the real heroines. And – this is another aspect 
that makes this work unique – the story is told in an almost baroquely 
extravagant manner. The text consists of numerous small episodes that 
weave into one another and together form one great historical tale. 
They greatly soften the directness of the family story told in a back­
wards chronological order. But it is less of a heroic epic; from time to 
time, one has the impression that it is more of a picaresque novel, and 
usually it is a tragedy of the little people. The wars and the political 
events are tragic, but in fact they are presented as a farce and statement 
of human stupidity and malice. Jergović denies the events any pathos, 
including the pathos of criticism that we find with Shamsie as well as 
Jenni. This, too, is an important difference for the ethics of this novel.
Instead of pathos we find humour, irony, sarcasm and bitterness, 
satirical little scenes full of tragicomedy. The contempt for war and 
the culture of war is ubiquitous in Jergović’s work, but is expressed 
perhaps nowhere as pointedly as in the scene in which a war, namely 
the Yugoslav War of 1992, is mentioned for the first time in the novel. 
There, he writes with unsurpassable sarcasm:
The following month, which was as long as the war lasted in Dubrovnik, 
would be the most difficult in Dijana’s life, worse than the three months she 
spent with crazy Manda. Her son and especially her daughter rejected her and 
treated her like a stranger. […]
Their relations would improve a little only on the twenty­third day of fighting. 
While they were in the shelter an incendiary shell hit their house and it burned 
to the ground, leaving nothing to serve as a remembrance of their previous 
life. (47)
Jergović embeds his stories in the political events that concern 
Yugoslavia and the entire European continent, and at times, the nar­
ration also spills over to the United States of America. But he wants 
Werner Wintersteiner:     From a Violent Past towards a Global Ethics? Twentieth Century Atrocities … 
47
nothing less than to tell a political story of the century. In truth, it is 
a story of private life in times of war, violence and terror in the sense of 
Philippe Ariès. It is a story in which the pursuit of profit and vindictive­
ness, sexual desire, jealousy, betrayal, and the striving for a successful 
life are as much the driving motives as are brutal violence and human 
affection. Whether the heroes and heroines succeed, whether they sur­
vive or die a meaningless death – an absurd coincidence is often respon­
sible for this. Few people are real villains, and true heroines and heroes 
are even scarcer. Most of the contemporaries swim along somehow in 
the great maelstrom of history and try, usually inadequately, to save 
their own skin. To this end, they are soon prepared to commit almost 
any turpitude. For each struggling group settles up with their supposed 
friends or real enemies in the most brutal way: “Men write history with 
knives, and women summon it with words. It was that way this time 
too, at the edge of every ravine, gorge, and animal dumping ground” 
(263). Jergović describes a war, particularly the Second World War, as 
a “mystical temptation of blood and slaughter” (267).
Some figures, such as Regina’s brother Luka, embody a type such 
as Švejk, who reject war and attempt not to become guilty themselves. 
They remain little­appreciated outsiders. Ðovani, another of Regina’s 
brothers, conversely, returns to Yugoslavia out of idealism after Hitler 
invades France. He joins the Chetniks because he believes he can fight 
for freedom in this way. He does not personally participate in their 
murderous deeds; however, he is seen as the ringleader of a hit squad 
and is unceremoniously shot by the communist partisans. Regina, con­
fronted with the news of his death, saves the family honour (and her 
position after the partisans’ win) by inventing a story about Ðovani’s 
homosexuality, which he is living out in France. People are happy to 
believe this more exciting and attractive form of the “truth.” This is just 
one of the many examples of how the tragedy of the narratives unex­
pectedly turns into the tragicomic and the grotesque.
In this novel, there is an authorial narrator who bitterly relates the 
events and often gives a sarcastic commentary on them. Nonetheless, 
as a reader, one never feels blindsided or indoctrinated – probably pre­
cisely because he not only tells his stories in a seductively exciting man­
ner, but because the narrator lays all his cards on the table, positions 
himself and therefore is open to opposition.
Nevertheless, he is also the ethical authority of this novel, who not 
only comments on the events, but also on the fantasies of the people and 
the justifications of their actions. Most of the time, however, he does 
not judge, but instead tells a multitude of stories and anecdotes, of ad­
PKn, letnik 40, št 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2017
48
ventures and embarrassments, of the most terrible violence and unlikely 
strokes of luck. This means that in the end, the ethical question remains 
with the readers – and this is a good thing. They can not only allow 
themselves to engage in judging the characters and their behaviour, 
based on their own experiences and their value system, to judge the 
author based on what they interpret from his novel, but they can also 
compare the novels with each other and decide which aesthetic strate­
gies and which ethical assessments they find to be more convincing.
Comparing the three novels
All three novels demonstrate how powerfully politics, one could almost 
say – world history – intervenes in the life of the individual and influ­
ences it. Nowhere is there an idyll away from the bloody battles, wars 
and civil wars, away from terror, military coups and takeovers by dicta­
tors. With this, the novels pose ethical questions just using the topics 
and plot – questions about the causes of societal violence, about the 
possibilities of a good life, despite all violent experiences. Again and 
again, the heroes and heroines themselves face ethical challenges that 
they often cannot withstand, they incriminate themselves and are part­
ly responsible for the political developments that cause them to suffer.
The overarching issue of all three works is very explicitly that of the 
causes of (societal) violence. The authors use the “méthode roman” to 
explore these causes in writing. In the prologue, Kamila Shamsie asks 
quite programmatically: “How did it come to this?” (Shamsie 4), while 
with Jenni, the question at the forefront is why the French still cannot 
live together peacefully today. Jergović, on the other hand, seems to be 
the only one whose writing originates from the idea of the immutabil­
ity of human violence as a constant in social life, or to put it another 
way: he asks how a personal propensity to violence promotes and facili­
tates political violence, and vice versa.
In order to discover the causes of political violence, all three works 
make use of a historical profile encompassing a period of 60 to 100 
years of narrated time. In this way, they can represent biographical 
links and make a connection between personal and historical­political 
development visible. But this connection is less ensconced in the mate­
rial history of the facts. Rather, it is identified as an ideology or an intel­
lectual attitude that still prevails and is considerably responsible for the 
permanence of war and violent conflicts, for a culture of violence. The 
involvement of the characters in conflicts and wars, their taking sides 
Werner Wintersteiner:     From a Violent Past towards a Global Ethics? Twentieth Century Atrocities … 
49
or their avoidance, therefore, prove to be more than just the outlet of 
personal attitudes and a matter of character, but rather, they are also 
the result of constellations, dispositifs and discourses. The personal and 
the political are in this way never separated, which, however, in no way 
releases the individuals from their responsibilities.
The aesthetic strategies and ethical “answers” of the three works, 
however, are quite different. Although all three narrate a whole host of 
episodes and relate these very vividly, nevertheless, Shamsie and Jenni 
come closer to a political thesis novel, while Jergović’s thesis perhaps con­
sists in rejecting all political regimes equally. Accordingly, the heroes 
and heroines of Burnt Shadows and The French Art of War extensively 
discuss world affairs, the wars and their own conduct. In Burnt Shadows, 
this leads to the recognition of the continuity of mechanisms of North 
American imperialism; in The French Art of War to the insight that the 
current French racism is largely a product of the colonial wars. The 
Walnut Mansion, on the other hand, is a single panorama of human 
atrocities that cannot be reduced to the respective political systems. 
Here, the political reflections are also less of an issue for the numerous 
characters of this novel; instead, this task is assumed by the narrator. But 
he debates less than he narrates. He offers an unlikely plethora of epi­
sodes “as only life itself can write them,” one might agree, that nonethe­
less all point in the same direction, consolidate towards the “argument” 
of human cruelty. If the “global ethics” of Shamsie and Jenni is the eth­
ics of the global society, then with Jergović, it is the globality of human 
weakness and perfidy. Of course, all this is just my interpretation of the 
novels as a cultural science­oriented peace researcher, for the aesthetic 
openness of all three works refuses any and all definitive interpretations.
Translated to English by Lizzie Warren Wilson
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Jergović, Miljenko: The Walnut Mansion. New Haven and London: Yale University 
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– – –. For Love of Country? Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.
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Od nasilne preteklosti h globalni etiki? 
Grozodejstva dvajsetega stoletja v izbranih 
romanih enaindvajsetega stoletja
Ključne besede: literatura in etika / svetovna književnost / roman / 21. stoletje / estetska 
avtonomija / družbeni angažma / Shamsie, Kamila / Jenni, Alexis / Jergović, Miljenko
Razmerje med etiko in literaturo je že od nekdaj sporno. Prispevek najprej 
osvetli to razmerje in zagovarja tezo, da literatura sama ni etična, prav zato 
pa lahko služi etičnim namenom. V soglasju z Martho Nussbaum razloži, za­
kaj se mora sleherno razmišljanje o etiki danes navezovati na globalno etiko. 
Nato predstavi tri sodobne romane, ki se ukvarjajo z grozodejstvi. Vsi trije se 
dotikajo osrednjih dogodkov in socialnih premikov 20. stoletja. Zastavljajo 
vprašanja o vojni, nasilju in civilizacijskih prelomnicah. Ne poučujejo, temveč 
pripovedujejo zgodbe. Uvrščajo se v svetovno književnost, in sicer zato, ker se 
zgodbe in etična razmišljanja, ki jih te vzbujajo, ne navezujejo na posamezne 
nacionalne države, temveč (v različni meri) na globalno situacijo. Ne glede na 
te podobnosti se razlikujejo po tematikah in po zemljepisnih ter političnih 
scenarijih: Burnt Shadows (2009) Kamile Shamsie je roman, v katerem je v 
ospredju vprašanje atomskega orožja, bombe na Nagasaki in njenih posle­
dic. L‘Art français de la guerre (2011) Alexisa Jennija se ukvarja s Francijo, 
z deželo, ki ni bila le kolonialna sila, temveč tudi žrtev nacističnega nasilja. 
Werner Wintersteiner:     From a Violent Past towards a Global Ethics? Twentieth Century Atrocities … 
51
Roman Dvorci iz orehovine (2003) Miljenka Jergovića opisuje vojne in nasilje 
v Jugoslaviji v 20. stoletju. Tema, ki povezuje vsa tri dela, je spraševanje po 
raz logih za (družbeno) nasilje. Pripovedovani čas zaobjema obdobja od 60 do 
100 let. Avtorji tako naredijo vidno povezavo med osebnim in zgodovinsko­
po litičnim razvojem. Toda ta povezava se ne skriva le v materialni zgodovini 
dejstev, temveč predvsem v ideologiji in »kulturi«, ki je odgovorna za trajanje 
vojne in nasilnih sporov. Izkaže se, da je vpletenost likov v konflikte in vojne 
več kot le vprašanje značaja in osebne drže; je plod družbenih konstelacij. 
Osebno in politično nista nikoli ločena, kar pa seveda posameznikov ne odve­
zuje od odgovornosti.
1.01 Izvirni znanstveni članek / Original scientific article
82.091-3:17