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Diary of Interrupted Days, by Dragan Todorovic, Random House Canada, 252 pages, $29.95

Read the first chapter (publisher's website) http://tinyurl.com/c2t7pm

Those naughty Serbs. Having repeatedly elected the formidably badger-haired, evidently genocidal Slobodan Milosevic, what did they get in 1999 but the mass destruction they deserved? The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia killed more civilians, even at a conservative estimate, than the subsequent terrorist bombings in London, Madrid and Bali combined. Are innocent Serbs less innocent?

Dragan Todorovic's first novel written in English is, among other things, a sardonic dispatch from inside Serbia's ongoing prison of world censure. A fugitive from the Yugoslav wars, Todorovic has made Toronto home since leaving Belgrade in 1995. Like thousands of Canadians with Serbian roots, he watched as Canada actively supported a bombing campaign that sowed terror among friends and family back home.

Counting Serbs among my Yugoslav friends, I felt ashamed of my country in the spring of 1999. Later, in Serbia on a research trip, I stood next to a bombed-out bridge on the residential fringes of a minor town and wondered, Why? I've never met Todorovic, but I do come to his work with a small bias. I'm relieved to say that I don't need to lean on it to praise his book.

A man, a Serb, is on a return journey to his fractured homeland. In the toilet cubicle of the descending plane, he scribbles a note to himself: People are not defined by what they strive for. A darker truth is buried in memory. “You are what you run away from.”

Launching the novel's cascading ironies, Boris Bulic is heading to the city he ran from, Belgrade, for his father's funeral, but he must land in Budapest because his country of refuge, Canada, is waging undeclared war on the country he abandoned to leave war behind. The Hungarian customs agent joins the international finger-wagging, telling Boris that if he plans to defend his homeland, he should hurry up. “Your side will be defeated in no time.”

Boris bridles. “You don't know what my side is.”

Outside the terminal, he hears his language: Serbs with kids and stacks of luggage are straggling into the departure hall. He finds the one battered minibus that's still doing the cross-border Belgrade run. Boris is the only passenger on the return. Asked by the driver what he did in Belgrade, he says he was an artist, his most notable work possibly the ice cream statue of Milosevic, displayed in a cooler truck in Republic Square.

“You could destroy the idol by licking him, but then you'd have to taste him.”

“Did you put a stick up his ass?”

“I felt something was missing.”

They share a belly laugh and their rapport is confirmed.

Memories crowd in on Boris as the bus enters Serbia. The rebellious son of a controlling, militarist dad and ineffectual mother, he became friends in the early 1990s with a rock star and political activist, Johnny. We're whisked to a protest concert in central Belgrade. Tens of thousands are rallying against Milosevic-backed aggression in Bosnia. Johnny paces the stage between sets, rousing the crowd with eloquent words on the shame of Serb atrocities in Sarajevo and the lost dream of Yugoslav brotherhood. A united roar of “Not in our name!” echoes off the buildings of Republic Square.

Todorovic's prose vividly evokes the energy of Belgrade's wartime streets, while subtly delivering a compact primer on the political maelstrom of disintegrating Yugoslavia. He is writing in his second language, and his marshalling of effects and assurance of voice are hugely impressive.

Johnny is conscripted as a high-profile example to draft dodgers. Posted to a border zone where Croat troops are abusing Serb civilians, he lands in the jaws of a deadly power struggle between his corrupt Yugoslav People's Army commander and a criminal paramilitary leader hired by local Serbs. On home and battle fronts, Todorovic's microcosm captures the expanding confusions and dangers of the conflict as viewed by insiders, swimming for their lives in the vortex. His Belgraders identify equally as Yugoslavs, battered by sorrow for their imploding country, at the mercy of war's rampaging profiteers, fanatics and psychopaths. On the front lines, Johnny is offered a deal he can't refuse.

In Belgrade, Boris and Sara, Johnny's girlfriend, are thrown together by the need to find out his fate. Boris learns more than Sara does. He convinces himself that he must shield her from the full truth, a choice that will later haunt him. He's falling for her. Also, like Sara, he's ready to bail. With churning emotions, they apply for and are granted immigration visas to Canada.

We fly with them to Toronto, where a small apartment tries to imitate home. The gay village is just a block away. Boris finds himself surprised and moved by men holding hands on the street, then learns that city streets are much the same everywhere. Offering a few words to a passerby on Yonge Street, he's swiftly given the finger: “Fuck off, faggot.”

Toronto's quirks are as spot-on as Belgrade's here. But Belgrade, and NATO's bombers, get the final word. The best fiction makes you feel there are no strangers. It affirms that inside you, in the purest, deepest, maybe scariest part, is a shared reservoir.

This novel taps that core. If you recall Yugoslavia as a place made only more obscure by its media-spun death throes, Diary of Interrupted Days will unforgettably open you to its human face.

Jim Bartley is author of Drina Bridge, a novel of love and war in former Yugoslavia. Like Boris Bulic, he knows well the dangers of streets, uniforms and politicians with disturbing hairdos.