Roy Kesey's Nothing in the World is a novella set in Croatia, opening just as the recent war with Serbia begins.  Josko Banovic is a young man with few friends who daydreams about being noticed by the local girls.  When Serbia invades, Josko eagerly signs up for the army only to find it a mess of poor training and misinformed orders.  Abandoned by their superior officers, Josko's anti-air unit unwittingly becomes first war heroes and then war casualties.  Injured and alone in the wreckage of his unit, Josko begins a journey across Croatia, where he discovers his gift for sniping as he follows both the siren song of a strange woman and the trail of his sister Klara, who he has a vaguely incestuous obsession with. 

Nothing in the World is divided into four parts, the first three ending with short fables that are seperated from the main narrative but set within the framework of the war.  It's these fables that provide the novella with much of its thematic weight, allowing Kesey to illuminate for us what Josko experiences firsthand, specifically the way in which war breeds both kindness and cruelty in equal measures without consideration for either saints or sinners.

Very early in the novella, Kesey recounts what is obviously a typical day in Josko's pre-war life:

School went as usual: alone at lunch and during the breaks, invisible in the classroom.  The teachers rarely called on Josko, and the few times he volunteered an answer, they looked at him as though they remembered having seen him before, but weren't quite sure where.  His classmates didn't go out of their way to avoid him, but never sought him out or showed much interest in what he had to say.  It was easier simply to be alone.

Throughout the war, Josko is more often alone than in the company of other human beings.  Increasingly, his interactions with others begin with misunderstandings and end in violence, but Josko never gives up his quest for his sister and for the other, more mysterious woman.  His longing for both steadily increases, leading him onward with a desperate hope that infuses not only Josko but all the other inhabitants of his ravaged country.  It's this hope that dwindles and swells skillfully throughout this short narrative, and its redemptive, purposeful promise is what Kesey finally leaves us with in the end.

The novella as a form has seemingly fallen on hard times.  Too long to publish in magazines and too short to stand alone in book form, the novella is most often relegated to the task of bulking up short story collections, where it rarely does more than show how gifted short story writers too often struggle at the longer forms.  Lucky for us, Bullfight Media has taken a chance on Nothing in the World, which shows how powerful the novella is when done right.  Kesey's written a great debut book here, one that's as beautiful as it is brutal.  Not to be missed.