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by Anonymous
Budapest, Hungary April 8, 2004 -- A just released contemporary novel, Atlas Was a Genius, by Ivan Dimano is based on the true stories of children from Eastern Europe. The book reveals their victimization by the corrupt national police and their sex trafficking partners in Hungary, and shadows the racial and ethnic prejudice that lingers just below the official radar for this country set to be included in the New Europe.
The capture and exploitation of the young women in the book told in their own words and thoughts, reflects not only on their vulnerability but on the whole structure of a society that appears to value its nationalism above its morality.
The explicit graphic description of the rapes of the girls in the book would in almost every other fiction novel lead to a well-founded charge of pandering to the voyeur. But in this book, after the reader passes the stage of cold shivering, the text somehow remains in the context of the accounts of the girls themselves.
Atlas Was a Genius is just fiction with a storyline, fairly good characters, and a believable plot, but the reader is left with the question of whether this is really a critique of the culture as well. A tagline from http://www.ivandimano.com, the website of the author, characterizes police corruption in Hungary in a disturbing way: “Describing corruption as endemic or widespread misses the point…it is NORMAL.”
One does not get the sense that the author has padded reality just for the sake of relevancy and given the paucity of contemporary literature about life in the European Union’s new Eastern frontier, the book is relevant. Its adds more color than content, but this could be a good thing. Official reports of the ten-year process of readying the former communist states of Eastern Europe to join the European Union are a pregnant example of the “Content is King” maxim.
While economists argue whether the expansion of the European Union will be good or bad for business, perhaps an important part of the New Europe balance sheet is being overlooked. Just how big is this soon to be merged moral deficit?
The book is published by Global Book Publisher and is printed in the USA and the Netherlands.
This article courtesy of http://www.curtainforhome.com. You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author name and URL remain intact.
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