In the Hold, by Vladimir Arsenijevic (Harvill, £8.99 in UK)

Are first novels supposed to be as good as this? Set in Belgrade during the last months of 1991, it is the story of a young couple waiting out the last weeks of what seems to have been a long pregnancy. The mother to be has been very careful, gave up her drug habit, and prepares for giving birth the way an athlete trains for a brace. Her husband, the narrator, tells the story with a sympathetic, intelligent and quietly desperate, humorous detachment worthy of Saul Bellow. Beyond his comments about his memories of hoping as a 15 year old "that my father might simply fall apart, in his sleep, under the pressure of the hatred I was directing towards him", and his account of his wife's brother, Lazar, a Hare Krishna, who has been handed over to the draft by their passive parents, the narrat or skilfully evokes an atmosphere of confusion, apathy and the frightening way in which tragedy becomes too commonplace to even object to.