One flew over the Kosovo theater : an anthology of contemporary drama from Kosovo

Perhaps the first full-throated response to the war in Kosovo to be published in English, this anthology in a Serbian translation crossed the border between the two countries in 2014 as one of the first works to break a literary silence of three decades. Every play included here even the two comedies proceeds from traumatic circumstances or the wake of them: Set in the thick of the NATO bombing and the forced expulsion from Pristina, The Basement is a family drama in which every inclination and every snap reaction can have an unbearable effect. The Finger draws its impetus from a vacuum, from a family bereft, and the implacable dynamics between two women.

In it a disappearance calls for and exacts rituals in the gap between life and death. In the monodrama, Slaying the Mosquito, exile carries with it all the derangement of the war, enacted in the person of the poet-madman-shaman, a tormented spirit caught between diverse worlds. The eponymous One Flew over the Kosovo Theater is an uproarious lampoon.

Set in the days approaching the independence of Kosovo, it takes aim at the new government and their yen for censorship and the appropriation of the arts. Recapitulating the occupation and conflict, The Crossroads Café is a sweeping farce with a full cast of characters, including Serbian Police and guerrilla fighters, together with an Everyman trapped in the machinations. One Flew over the Kosovo Theater is more than a collection of plays.

It is something that verges on a saga.