Before the Feast by Saša Stanišić review – a witty Balkan take on the Reich

Neo-Nazis mingle with colourful military characters in the Bosnian author’s humorous portrait of a quiet German village

German bookshops are very popular with writers, because at the end of an evening’s reading, the booksellers will slip you an envelope stuffed with cash. I can imagine Saša Stanišić on the bookshop circuit declaiming five- and 10-minute chunks from his second novel, as it’s much more a series of sketches and tableaux than a straightforward yarn. Stanišić left Bosnia as a teenager and grew up in Germany (the late Yugoslavia has greatly enriched world literature through its diaspora: look at Aleksandar Hemon and Josip Novakovich). His first novel, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (2008), about the breakup of Yugoslavia, was an international hit.

Before the Feast is set in the German village of Fürstenfelde, near the Polish border. It is a quiet, backward rural spot that in its bucolic nefariousness recalls the setting for Peter Benson’s Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke, while its extensive annals echo Adam Thorpe’s Ulverton.

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