The Book
This is a series of articles written and published in 1996-2000 in
Macedonia, in Russia, in Egypt and in the Czech Republic.
How the West lost the East. The economics, the politics, the
geopolitics, the conspiracies, the corruption, the old and the new,
the plough and the internet - it is all here, in colourful and
provocative prose.
From "The Mind of Darkness":
"'The Balkans' - I say - 'is the unconscious of the world'. People
stop to digest this metaphor and then they nod enthusiastically. It is
here that the repressed memories of history, its traumas and fears and
images reside. It is here that the psychodynamics of humanity - the
tectonic clash between Rome and Byzantium, West and East,
Judeo-Christianity and Islam - is still easily discernible. We are
seated at a New Year's dining table, loaded with a roasted pig and
exotic salads. I, the Jew, only half foreign to this cradle of
Slavonics. Four Serbs, five Macedonians. It is in the Balkans that all
ethnic distinctions fail and it is here that they prevail
anachronistically and atavistically. Contradiction and change the only
two fixtures of this tormented region. The women of the Balkan -
buried under provocative mask-like make up, retro hairstyles and too
narrow dresses. The men, clad in sepia colours, old fashioned suits
and turn of the century moustaches. In the background there is the
crying game that is Balkanian music: liturgy and folk and elegy
combined. The smells are heavy with muskular perfumes. It is like time
travel. It is like revisiting one's childhood."
The Author
Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review and eBookWeb , a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.
Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of
Macedonia.
Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com
End of Project Gutenberg's Moral Deliberations in Modern Cinema, by Sam Vaknin