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Nothing in the World
"In haunting, evocative prose, Roy Kesey captures the horrors of war, the insanity of genocide, as well as the fleeting joys of love. Nothing in the World is a memorable debut."-Laila Lalami, author of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits
Nothing in the World is sparingly written, yet with great detail and emotion.
- GenresFiction
116 pages, Paperback
First published May 16, 2006
1 person is currently reading
163 people want to read
About the author
Roy Kesey
15 books46 followersAuthor and translator Roy Kesey was born in northern California and currently lives in Maryland. His latest book is the short story collection Any Deadly Thing (Dzanc Books 2013). His other books include the novel Pacazo (Dzanc Books 2011/Jonathan Cape 2012), the short story collection All Over (Dzanc Books 2007), the novella Nothing in the World (Bullfight Media 2006/Dzanc Books 2007), and two historical guidebooks. He has received a number of awards for his work, including an NEA creative writing fellowship, the Paula Anderson Book Award, and the Bullfight Media Little Book Award. His short stories, essays, translations and poems have appeared in more than a hundred magazines and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and New Sudden Fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 20, 2010
This novella of only 80 pages is about one Croat in the Croatian Serbian civil war of the 90s. I am choosing 5 stars, "amazing", because that describes my feelings better than four stars, I really "liked it". I have a hard time saying I LIKED this book, but the book is amazing and excellently executed. You are there with him in Croatia - in Dubrovnik, in Split, in the small villages along the Dalmatian coastline, on the islands. The writing suberbly conjures the landscape of Croatia - its beauty, its harsh stone shorelines and the startlingly blue water.Astoundingly beautifully written. But the Croat is half dead, and you feel that too. He is a soldier, and you are too. I know I would not last one second in a prison. This book has brought me closer to being in a war than I hope I ever will be.
I have been in Croatia. I have been in these villages, in Split and in Dubrovnik, one of the most beautiful places on earth. It was completely restored after the war with EU money. It is a teeny little white marble gem of a city, surrounded by sparkling blue water. Clothes lines cross the alleys above your head. Underwear, flowered house-dresses and jeans flutter in the wind. It all came back to me. We visited a small museum in Dubrovnik about the war, but this book said so much more. It puts the reader there - in an unbelievably gorgeous place in an unbelievably terrible war.
I have been in Croatia. I have been in these villages, in Split and in Dubrovnik, one of the most beautiful places on earth. It was completely restored after the war with EU money. It is a teeny little white marble gem of a city, surrounded by sparkling blue water. Clothes lines cross the alleys above your head. Underwear, flowered house-dresses and jeans flutter in the wind. It all came back to me. We visited a small museum in Dubrovnik about the war, but this book said so much more. It puts the reader there - in an unbelievably gorgeous place in an unbelievably terrible war.
Read
September 12, 2012I read this years ago, when it first came out. The book still haunts me, and I regard it as setting a high standard that I aspire to someday match in my own work. Truly a great novella.
January 23, 2017
What I feel most compelled to say in awe of Roy Kesey's talent, is that I read his entire book in one sitting. One! Honestly, I couldn't put it down. Maybe that just illuminates my own obessive tendences, but I gluttinously devoured NOTHING IN THE WORLD, cramming it all in as fast as I could and then licking my fingers when I was done.
NOTHING IN THE WORLD lures you in innocently--and lyrically--enough. The first paragraph is lovely, placing the reader solidly in Josko' world, which manages (like so much of Kesey's work) to feel both familiar and exotic, no small feat:
"The white stone walls of Josko's house were tinged with gold in the growing light, and the only sound was the sharp ring of his father's pick glancing off the rocks in the vineyard. Josko ran to join him as the sun slipped into the sky, and they worked together without speaking, his father freeing the rocks from the soil, Josko heaving them to his shoulder and staggering to the wall they were building to mark their property line to the east."
This attention to detail and to the sensory experience of the reader is consistent throughout Roy's book and as I read I was drawn along, unwilling to leave that world that felt so very real to me. Even when the world became darker and more violent, or perhaps especially when the world became darker and more violent, for that is when Kesey's matter-of-fact, detailed style really grabs you by the throat:
"Josko opened his eyes, and the sky was a thin whitish blue. There was the warm salty sweetness of blood in his mouth, and behind his eyes he felt a strange dense presence. He raised one hand to his head. Above his left ear, a shard of metal protruded from his skull. He wrapped his hand around it and ripped it out. Pain deafened him, and strips of sky floated down to enfold him."
Okay, from that point on, I was entirely hooked. My own brain began to throb with a "strange dense presence" and I realized it was Josko in there, Josko in my brain, becoming part of my grey matter creating new peaks and grooves as he becomes a legend in his own country (unknown to him)--a celebrated war hero, first for shooting down two enemy planes with his unit, and then for singlehandedly killing the infamous sniper Hadzihafizbegovic and setting his severed head on a table in a cafe. The trouble is, as Josko moves through the countryside alone, becoming more and more dirty and disheveled (also crazed by the haunting female voice that sings in his head, pulling him along siren-like) he looks less and less like a war hero and he is repeatedly shot at, beaten, even arrested and imprisoned. In prison, in an utterly painful and ironic scene, the soldiers beat Josko most brutally of all because when they demand to know his name, he tells them he is Josko Banovic. Of course you are, says the soldier, and I am Marshall Tito. They kick him for claiming to be a man they have made into legend, a famous hero. We know he is Josko, he knows he is, and yet the soldiers may just kill him for telling the truth which they are certain is a lie.
That sense of tragic unfairness permeates NOTHING IN THE WORLD, absolutely aptly, given that it is a novella that has the fighting between Serbs and Croats as its backdrop. The writing is intelligent, the story is gripping and dark but also funny and redemptive in places, and the ending is perfect. NOTHING IN THE WORLD is a great read--and like nothing in the world I have read before.
NOTHING IN THE WORLD lures you in innocently--and lyrically--enough. The first paragraph is lovely, placing the reader solidly in Josko' world, which manages (like so much of Kesey's work) to feel both familiar and exotic, no small feat:
"The white stone walls of Josko's house were tinged with gold in the growing light, and the only sound was the sharp ring of his father's pick glancing off the rocks in the vineyard. Josko ran to join him as the sun slipped into the sky, and they worked together without speaking, his father freeing the rocks from the soil, Josko heaving them to his shoulder and staggering to the wall they were building to mark their property line to the east."
This attention to detail and to the sensory experience of the reader is consistent throughout Roy's book and as I read I was drawn along, unwilling to leave that world that felt so very real to me. Even when the world became darker and more violent, or perhaps especially when the world became darker and more violent, for that is when Kesey's matter-of-fact, detailed style really grabs you by the throat:
"Josko opened his eyes, and the sky was a thin whitish blue. There was the warm salty sweetness of blood in his mouth, and behind his eyes he felt a strange dense presence. He raised one hand to his head. Above his left ear, a shard of metal protruded from his skull. He wrapped his hand around it and ripped it out. Pain deafened him, and strips of sky floated down to enfold him."
Okay, from that point on, I was entirely hooked. My own brain began to throb with a "strange dense presence" and I realized it was Josko in there, Josko in my brain, becoming part of my grey matter creating new peaks and grooves as he becomes a legend in his own country (unknown to him)--a celebrated war hero, first for shooting down two enemy planes with his unit, and then for singlehandedly killing the infamous sniper Hadzihafizbegovic and setting his severed head on a table in a cafe. The trouble is, as Josko moves through the countryside alone, becoming more and more dirty and disheveled (also crazed by the haunting female voice that sings in his head, pulling him along siren-like) he looks less and less like a war hero and he is repeatedly shot at, beaten, even arrested and imprisoned. In prison, in an utterly painful and ironic scene, the soldiers beat Josko most brutally of all because when they demand to know his name, he tells them he is Josko Banovic. Of course you are, says the soldier, and I am Marshall Tito. They kick him for claiming to be a man they have made into legend, a famous hero. We know he is Josko, he knows he is, and yet the soldiers may just kill him for telling the truth which they are certain is a lie.
That sense of tragic unfairness permeates NOTHING IN THE WORLD, absolutely aptly, given that it is a novella that has the fighting between Serbs and Croats as its backdrop. The writing is intelligent, the story is gripping and dark but also funny and redemptive in places, and the ending is perfect. NOTHING IN THE WORLD is a great read--and like nothing in the world I have read before.
July 18, 2007
Sit with this book and don't get up. The imagery, the language, the craft . . . you'll carry this story in you long after you finish.
June 26, 2007
A great and moving book. Roy Kesey is what I want to be when I grow up. Which is taller. And younger. And better looking. And supremely talented.
June 26, 2007
You'll avoid all warzones after reading this expressive book.
July 28, 2007
a beautiful, hallucinatory novella about a Croatian teenager caught up in the Serb and Croat wars of the last decade. It's been out of print and fortunately ias about to be reissued.
Read
June 15, 2009A novella set in the former Yugoslavia written by one of my old college friends. It won the Dzanc Books prize. Roy's got real talent.
July 24, 2009
In one two hour sitting, you could read this book, and it could undo you.
Want to read
August 10, 2024I haven't read this novel but the following review made me want to so I reproducing it for others' benefit:
"Opening the first page of Roy Kesey’s Nothing in the World is like slipping into a dream and never waking up. Josko is an ordinary young man, yearning for his sister, who has married and moved away. It is only after the Serb guerillas attack Krajina that Josko is forced out of his childhood and into the extraordinary role of a soldier/hero, in the midst of a country falling apart. The winner of the Bullfight Little Book Prize, Kesey’s novella astounds as he portrays Josko’s nightmarish journey efficiently, effectively and engrossingly.
"The first glimpse we get of Josko is poignant and indicative. He has just taken a drink from the spigot, when two butterflies settle at the puddle by his feet. He stills, then leans down to capture them. He “felt the faint beat of wings against his palms, parted his thumbs and peered inside and saw that his hands were empty.” Josko comes up empty many times throughout the book. He assigns himself a series of missions, the first being to enlist as a soldier in order to protect his family and his country. It is then that the terror begins. Expecting glory, he is instead placed with a mix-match of half-fit soldiers, in the middle of nowhere and with next to no means of defense. On his next mission, he journeys through the wilderness to find his sister. He finally reaches her town, only to find the house she is supposed to be living in empty and falling apart. On his journey, Josko battles starvation, delirium and dehydration so badly that when he tries to drink, his throat closes up and it is a battle even to swallow. In his delirium he has been hearing a strange girl’s voice in his head. He follows it, taking her screams as a warning and her singing as encouragement, all the while searching for his next mission, next meal, next drink of water.
"Kesey does a wonderful job of representing ordinary people caught up in the madness of war. At one point in his travels Josko asks a girl for food. She, thinking he is going to rape her, tells him that there is nothing for him to take that hasn’t been taken once already. When he tells her he wouldn’t rape her because then the others would come, she laughs and tells him that there are no others. The two share a bed without sharing each other, and both are grateful for the civil company of a like soul in the midst of takers and destruction. Both Josko and the girl have been tested beyond the limits of how much a human being should be tested in a lifetime, and the two bond over separate sorrows.
"It’s amazing how much Kesey manages to tell in such a short amount of time. He writes with a sense of urgency that matches Josko’s, keeping the story moving along at breakneck speed. In a matter of only a few pages, Josko learns that the war has begun in earnest, enlists, goes through training, and is manning an “air defense system…a relic from World War II, its barrel pitted with rust inside and out.”
"In between the accounts of Josko’s travels, Kesey also inserts a few italicized chapters, each beginning more or less the same. “What happened was this: There was once an old woman/man….” The repetition of these stories adds to the surreal quality of the novella. In addition, the three italicized tales seem to indicate Josko’s attitude toward his changing missions. The story of the old woman who makes the best of her misfortunes represents Josko’s idealism and naiveté in the beginning. The man whose vineyard burns just as he receives financial help is told at a time when Josko feels that life keeps pulling the rug out from under him. The story of the old woman whose roof has been blown up begins with her being happy at living directly under the sun and the moon, and ends with the ominous innuendo of the coming winter and death. It is at this moment that Josko considers abandoning his mission, but then the girl’s voice rises again in a scream, and he knows he must hurry.
"Nothing in the World chronicles a runaway soldier on a courageous journey in which he must give literally everything for his family and his country. He is stretched to the limits of human endurance, taking every test thrown at him and throwing it right back, still suffering as he does so. In the end, Josko’s story is truly a nightmare, and one can’t help but shudder and wonder whether or not he will ever wake up.
"—reviewed by Kelly Zavala"
"Opening the first page of Roy Kesey’s Nothing in the World is like slipping into a dream and never waking up. Josko is an ordinary young man, yearning for his sister, who has married and moved away. It is only after the Serb guerillas attack Krajina that Josko is forced out of his childhood and into the extraordinary role of a soldier/hero, in the midst of a country falling apart. The winner of the Bullfight Little Book Prize, Kesey’s novella astounds as he portrays Josko’s nightmarish journey efficiently, effectively and engrossingly.
"The first glimpse we get of Josko is poignant and indicative. He has just taken a drink from the spigot, when two butterflies settle at the puddle by his feet. He stills, then leans down to capture them. He “felt the faint beat of wings against his palms, parted his thumbs and peered inside and saw that his hands were empty.” Josko comes up empty many times throughout the book. He assigns himself a series of missions, the first being to enlist as a soldier in order to protect his family and his country. It is then that the terror begins. Expecting glory, he is instead placed with a mix-match of half-fit soldiers, in the middle of nowhere and with next to no means of defense. On his next mission, he journeys through the wilderness to find his sister. He finally reaches her town, only to find the house she is supposed to be living in empty and falling apart. On his journey, Josko battles starvation, delirium and dehydration so badly that when he tries to drink, his throat closes up and it is a battle even to swallow. In his delirium he has been hearing a strange girl’s voice in his head. He follows it, taking her screams as a warning and her singing as encouragement, all the while searching for his next mission, next meal, next drink of water.
"Kesey does a wonderful job of representing ordinary people caught up in the madness of war. At one point in his travels Josko asks a girl for food. She, thinking he is going to rape her, tells him that there is nothing for him to take that hasn’t been taken once already. When he tells her he wouldn’t rape her because then the others would come, she laughs and tells him that there are no others. The two share a bed without sharing each other, and both are grateful for the civil company of a like soul in the midst of takers and destruction. Both Josko and the girl have been tested beyond the limits of how much a human being should be tested in a lifetime, and the two bond over separate sorrows.
"It’s amazing how much Kesey manages to tell in such a short amount of time. He writes with a sense of urgency that matches Josko’s, keeping the story moving along at breakneck speed. In a matter of only a few pages, Josko learns that the war has begun in earnest, enlists, goes through training, and is manning an “air defense system…a relic from World War II, its barrel pitted with rust inside and out.”
"In between the accounts of Josko’s travels, Kesey also inserts a few italicized chapters, each beginning more or less the same. “What happened was this: There was once an old woman/man….” The repetition of these stories adds to the surreal quality of the novella. In addition, the three italicized tales seem to indicate Josko’s attitude toward his changing missions. The story of the old woman who makes the best of her misfortunes represents Josko’s idealism and naiveté in the beginning. The man whose vineyard burns just as he receives financial help is told at a time when Josko feels that life keeps pulling the rug out from under him. The story of the old woman whose roof has been blown up begins with her being happy at living directly under the sun and the moon, and ends with the ominous innuendo of the coming winter and death. It is at this moment that Josko considers abandoning his mission, but then the girl’s voice rises again in a scream, and he knows he must hurry.
"Nothing in the World chronicles a runaway soldier on a courageous journey in which he must give literally everything for his family and his country. He is stretched to the limits of human endurance, taking every test thrown at him and throwing it right back, still suffering as he does so. In the end, Josko’s story is truly a nightmare, and one can’t help but shudder and wonder whether or not he will ever wake up.
"—reviewed by Kelly Zavala"
May 7, 2021
Very good
For a student, very good read! Ties in a lot of storytelling elements and a very engaging story of someone on a doomed adventure.
For a student, very good read! Ties in a lot of storytelling elements and a very engaging story of someone on a doomed adventure.
November 9, 2023
Like a 3.5 serve
January 29, 2017
Nihilistic. Well written.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews