Description
The chillingly clinical phrase collateral damage was originally coined by the Pentagon during the first Gulf War. It was used to euphemistically refer to the deaths and maiming (to say nothing of destroyed livelihoods, disrupted family lives and lost hopes) of innocent civilians who got caught in the crossfire. It rendered those casualties invisible in official reports and television broadcasts, and effectively kept them off the public conscience.
But where propaganda obscures the human toll exacted by conflict, fiction of course, has to do precisely the opposite. It makes visible the individual; his hopes, his dreams, his pain, his loves, his disappointments. To read a well crafted story is to be allowed into the crawlspace of a character's mind and given the freedom to poke around under his skin. There is perhaps a certain irony in the title chosen for the fifth collection of writings in the Silverfish imprint.
ISBN:9789834081683
