UNCW graduate's debut novel 'Nermina's Chance' follows a woman's escape from Bosnian War

Ben Steelman
·3 min read
Dina Greenberg, who graduated from UNCW with an MFA in Creative Writing, is the author of "Nermina's Chance."
Dina Greenberg, who graduated from UNCW with an MFA in Creative Writing, is the author of "Nermina's Chance."

New from UNCW's literary mill is a contemporary tale of trauma and healing.

"Nermina's Chance" is the debut novel from Dina Greenberg, who earned her MFA in creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she was managing editor of the Chautauqua literary journal.

It follows the odyssey of Nermina Beganovic, a refugee from the Bosnian War of the 1990s, the war that taught the world the phrase "ethnic cleansing."

Dina Greenberg, who graduated from UNCW with an MFA in Creative Writing, is the author of "Nermina's Chance."
Dina Greenberg, who graduated from UNCW with an MFA in Creative Writing, is the author of "Nermina's Chance."

Nermina, a young medical student, and her family are Westernized, secular Muslims, university educated, who don't mind drinking alcohol once in a while and who have as little in common with the Taliban as the average Episcopalian.

No matter: To the right-wing Serbian Chetniks, they are vermin to be purged from the former Yugoslav state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Within a few days in April 1992, Nermina's comfortable, middle-class life is destroyed. The Serbs shell the city of Sarajevo. Nermina is captured and raped by Serbian thugs; her parents and her beloved brother, Mirsad, are killed.

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With bribes, Nermina manages to get out of Bosnia to a refugee camp in Italy, leading a 5-year-old orphan named Esmer, who saw his mother die. Leaving Esmer with relatives, she nevertheless feels she has abandoned and betrayed him.

But that's only the start of the story.

"Nermina's Chance" is essentially three interlocked novellas. In the second of these, Nermina lands in Portland, Oregon. She finds a hospital job and an apartment, but scars remain. Desperate to fill the void from the loss of her family and Esmer, she resolves to become a single mother.

Her chosen sperm donor is Carl, a hunky construction worker with good genes but immaturity issues. She lies, tells Carl she has birth control, and sheds no tears when he heads off to Vancouver a few weeks later.

In part three, Nermina's daughter Atika is born, and it takes a village of friends and fellow refugees to raise her. Nermina, meanwhile, finds some healing through a network of friends and female counselors. With her experience, she begins to work with traumatized combat veterans, one of turn whom turns out to be Carl's brother.

The novel is told in the third person, but Greenberg pulls some intriguing tricks with diction. When Nermina has the point of view, the tone is formal, almost like the Victorian novels Nermina's mother loved. The text almost sounds as if translated from another language. With Carl and Jeff, the vocabulary is more colloquial and the syntax simpler. They sound like guys.

"Nermina's Chance" makes a case for the positive role of refugees in our society. Those parlor patriots who speak so glibly of a "second Civil War" need to read this book to see just what that would mean.

Ben Steelman can be reached at 910-616-1788 or peacebsteelman@gmail.com.

BOOK REVIEW

'NERMINA'S CHANCE'

By Dina Greenberg

Austin, Texas: Atmosphere Press, $19.99 paperback

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Nermina's Chance by UNCW grad Dina Greenberg looks at toll of war