This article examines the narrative strategy employed by Zülfü Livaneli in Serenad, arguing that the novel does not eliminate antagonism but deliberately relocates it from the figure of an individualized villain to impersonal and collective antagonistic structures such as bureaucracy, social indifference, and ordinary complicity. In contrast to many internationally acclaimed literary and cinematic works inspired by the atrocities of the Holocaust, where perpetrators are frequently represented as individualized and often pathologized figures, Serenad refrains from constructing a singular, morally legible villain. Drawing on Suzanne Keen’s theory of narrative empathy and Anna Lindhé’s concept of the “paradox of narrative empathy”, this article argues that Livaneli’s narrative choice prevents the reader’s affective investment in hatred toward a singular evil figure and instead redirects empathy toward the exercise of ethical self-reflection. Through this strategy, the novel reinforces the didactic and ethical dimensions of the reading experience by inviting readers to reflect not only on victimhood and suffering, but also on historical responsibility, social complicity, and the ordinary mechanisms through which violence becomes possible.
Paradox of narrative empathy, diffuse antagonism, collective responsability, Holocaust, ethical reading