REVIEW ESSAY – Phantom-Commando: Roland Orcsik’s Novel about the War

Several films and novels engage with the war in former Yugoslavia: Kusturica’s Underground (1995), Srdan Dragojevic’s Beautiful villages burn beautifully, Milčo Mančevski’s Before the rain (1994), the novel by Zoltán Danyi, A dögeltakarító (‘The Corpse Remover’) (2015), Orsolya Bencsik’s MorelLife (2016) and St. Euphemia (2015) by Attila Sirbik. The main narrative of Roland Orcsik’s novel Fantomkommandó (‘PhantomCommando’ 2016)  told by fifteen\ years old Peti is in many ways a novel of education that deals with the war, depicting the experiences of adolescents trying to find themselves. It has the liveliness of the narrative of a young boy, who loves to listen to and play music and is exasperated by his parents.