Out of the Woods, the fourth novel of Gretchen Shirm, is a sobering reflection on the necessity of bearing witness. It is also inseparable from real events: the massacre in 1995 of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys by the Serbian Army of Republika Srpska in Srebrenica, and the later conviction of a senior military commander, Radislav Krstić, for genocide. The novel, though imperfect, elevates the lived experience of survivors with care and verisimilitude, while asking probing questions about how to comprehend their trauma.
Jess, an introverted Australian woman in her 50s, has moved to the Netherlands to work as a legal secretary at The Hague. It’s the year 2000, and a United Nations tribunal is prosecuting war crimes committed in former Yugoslavia, with Jess’s days filled with transcribing the testimony of survivors of the Bosnian war. As the trial unfolds, two divergent feelings increasingly disorient her: the yawning gulf between the atrocities and her written account; and her sympathy for one of the defendants, a military commander named K.
