SOURCE: “Twilight in the Balkans,” in Christian Science Monitor, January 20, 1993, p. 13.

In the following review, Marien discusses the virtues and faults of Barnes's The Porcupine.

“Do you think a whole country can get therapy?” That question is at the core of British writer Julian Barnes's new novella [The Porcupine]. Set in January 1991 in an unnamed Balkan state, the narrative traces the trail of its elderly, recently deposed communist dictator.

As he revealed in a New Yorker essay published on Oct. 26 of this year, Barnes used the actual trial of Todor Zhivkov, former communist head of state in Bulgaria, as a springboard for his ruminations on the generational and ideological clash between a stolid true-believer and a faint-hearted law professor turned public prosecutor general, Peter Solinsky.

In this largely fictional account, the newly empowered authorities intend the widely televised trial to be a catharsis for the nation. The deck...