Goran’s Dilemma

A novel, set in the Yugoslav Wars of 1991-5, with a powerful true story at its heart that encapsulates in one set of relationships all the cruelty and compassion that characterised Europe’s ‘forgotten’ conflicts. Thoroughly researched by an author with first-hand experience of the aftermath of the near four-year siege of Sarajevo. 1992. Bosnian Serb Army Commander, Ratko Mladić, is besieging and bombarding the citizens of Sarajevo. His forces are rampaging through much of the rest of Bosnia at the same time. But, as his notoriety increases, his daughter Ana, a medical student in Belgrade, is struggling to deal with the anomaly of her commitment to the caring professions and her father’s role as a genocidal killer. When her partner and fellow medical student, Goran, challenges her to renounce her father, she responds in a way no-one might have foreseen, changing the lives of those close to her dramatically and irrevocably. As he struggles to deal with the consequences of Ana’s actions, Goran stumbles into a dilemma even more challenging than his choice over his ultimatum to her. His response to this fresh dilemma will haunt him for years; but, by now a qualified doctor, he works on the frontline of the post-war devastation in Bosnia, seeking to repair children damaged physically and psychologically by the conflicts. It is a saintly Bosnian Muslim social worker who emerges to jolt him out of his torpor, helps him chart his route to redemption, and teaches him a whole new way of living his life. Though based on a true father-daughter dynamic, Goran’s Dilemma is also a timeless story of love discovered, doomed and then renewed.