An email correspondence about Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadžić led to Ed Vulliamy’s unexpected bond with the Irish author, who died last week aged 93
t first, I thought it was a practical joke, or that perhaps there were two Edna O’Briens: one was the greatest living woman writing in English , while the other was someone who happened to have the same name. An email arrived out of the blue from “Edna O’Brien”, wanting to meet and discuss a book with which she thought I might be able to help. I replied, delighted to oblige, trying to ask discreetly whether or not this was “the” Edna O’Brien, whose work I had admired for decades.
A series of meetings ensued, at the restaurant and at Edna’s home in Chelsea. I had met Karadžić on three occasions, one of which was across the courtroom for the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ,, and tried as best I could to paint a portrait of the man whose madness would be pathetic were it not so murderous.
The denouement scene was shocking not just in itself as literature, but for Edna’s genius in mind-reading and depicting Karadžić’s cruel, crazy narcissism, his twisted vanity, stone-cold heart and a soul damned even before death. Many journalists have interviewed and tried to portray Karadžić, but none come anywhere near the scalpel edge of Edna’s psychological perception and mastery of language with which to convey what she finds not so much on the far side of appearances, but beneath them.
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