I must agree with most everything I've read about Dzevad Karahasan's book. This is not what one would expect to read from someone living in a city under siege, especially given other facts of personal tragedies he mentions in the book.

Karahasan, is a Bosnian Muslim that is married to a Serbian woman. As the city is getting shelled and is occupied by Serbian forces, one is thrown off balance by Karahasan's cool recollection of events and anecdotes. Of particular interest is his exchange with a French humanitarian worker. It just shows how two people, through their individual circumstances, can have a difficult time understanding one another.

This book is frighteningly honest. The author is never shy about his disenchantment or his occasional thoughts of suicide. Even with that, this is not a depressing book. More than anything, I think it shows how war just sucks the soul and life out of some people. Its like they don't even have the energy to be angry at their aggressors anymore. They just want out.

One aspect I certainly wasn't expecting when I picked up this book was the literary criticism. Karahasan was a professor at the University of Sarajevo who taught drama and literature. The book criticizes much modern literature as empty academia. He asserts that while war is destruction and chaos, that things like literature are one of the few civilizing factors in wartime, and that writers have a lot of responsibility.

The first chapter is quite awkward, but after that, the book really picks up. At 123 pages, this book is an easy read. For a portrait of life during wartime and for a heavy handed criticism of much of what passes for literature today, this is an excellent book. Even saying what I've said about it, this description doesn't fully capture the scope of this book. It is very hard to describe fully what the author is trying to accomplish, because he goes about it in an odd manner. That being said, pick up this short little book and be prepared to be moved.

I read this book a few years ago, so forgive me if I don't remember all the pertinent details. I can say that this book was incredibly moving with its vivid descriptions of Sarajevo as it once was and as it was during the war. Sarajevo as a city was a victim, and its people were onlookers suffering along with the city. The book is surprising in that it tells the story of the city from the perspective of a resident. One would expect a book of this type (and the time frame in which is was written) to be more a memoir about the way of life that was lost or about the horrors of war. No, the book is more an elegy for the city of Sarajevo and a voice of hope for what the city could be again.

This is one of the books that is not easily described but must be read and absorbed personally to fully appreciate its craft.

This short review is from "Books on Bosnia" published by The Bosnian Institute. Powerful account of the nature of the war in Bosnia (especially central Bosnia) during 1992-3, by a leading correspondent. Of particular interest for its coverage of the Croat-Muslim conflict, though it is less reliable on the background to Yugoslavia's break-up and descent into war

I am surprised no one else has written on this book. I only say "don't let this be the first book you read on the Balkans" because it really seems to scare you, especially what the Serbians did. Thus, I wonder is it "anti-Serb?" I don't think so, I think it reflects the truth. Although, there are many passages I remember, that of the migration out of Bosnia and seeing body parts such as a hand sticks out in my mind, so does forcing innocent parties to walk through minefields. If this is all true, this book seems to be the most damning in support of Nato involvement. I have read now, many books on the Balkans, this is a must read. I am sorry I have not seen others comment on this.

The book cover shows who is responsible for this war. Draped in Serb paraphenilia, thugs like those pictured here, destroyed Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and now Kosovo and Vojvodina. What many refuse to acknowledge is the West's gross involvement in these wars and their overt and covert support for the thugs in the picture.

Once again Mestrovic brings together some of the best writers and historians to put the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina into context. Everyone should read this book!!!

Bracewell's book chronicles the rise and fall of the Uskoks and their (largely unrecognized) role in the shaping of modern Europe. The book is enlightening in its depiction of the Uskok "pirates" of the Adriatic ( from Senj in Croatia) as the last bastion between Islam and Christianity. The Ottoman Empire extended to the South of of the Uskok enclave of Senj. This frontier (in modern Croatia) is where the Ottomans, the Austro-Hungarians and the Venetians converged, all with their own agendas. The result is a engrossing history lesson in in war, peace, diplomacy, religion, negotiation, political deals and merchant trade. Bracewell's book analyses the customs and culture of the Uskoks as well as their battle against not only the Ottoman Empire, but also Venice and eventually (their ally) Austria. A stimulating, well annotated, but not light read.

i liked this book a lot i am only 14 years old but i found it very good

Ro

It is hard to wipe off all the mud while the mudslinging takes place. Mr. Handke should be given a lot of credit for his effort. Although sometimes tiring, his understanding of the Serb, Croat and Muslim actions and american/french/german/british arrogance (or is it ignorance or both?), offers to the reader, specially in countries like united states that have been infected by the CNN/ABC virus, an opportunity to see the other side.

Unfortunately, following some points requires a better knowledge of the events, players, and history -- which is not as common nowdays.

The translation made the ideas a bit confusing at some points, but overall, this is a good book to read.

Handke's small but insightful book has one simple message (amidst many subtle ones): when it comes to Western media coverage of Serbia and the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, "The Emperor Has No Clothes."

Many Croats and their sympathizers have criticized Handke's book sharply for being pro-Serb, but it really can't be reasonably interpreted that way. Rather, the book is an outcry against the wholesale demonization of a people who have been portrayed, wrongly, as ignorant, barbaric, rabid nationalists drunk on historical myths and bent on vengeance, pillage and killing. In fact, all sides in this conflict have manipulated ethnic nationalism for their own ends -- and, among them, the Serbs have been principally distinguished by the relative lack of success in this regard (particularly when compared with Croatia, for example).

Read this book for a wake-up call. Things are not as black and white simple as your newspaper or CNN's clever talking heads (or Messr.s Clinton or Blair) would have you believe.

I know nothing about Serbia beyond what the press commonly reports. This book is the first I have read about that country. It makes no apologies for Serbian atrocities. It does, however, lyrically call journalists and journalism to task.

Written in German in late 1995 for a European audience, this 82-page book applies equally to the U.S. I speak as a former journalist who, during 25 years of largely national U.S. writing, plumbed every side to every question before reaching conclusions--always over-reporting to find nuances, and often reaching conclusions only as I wrote. It was a handicap not easily overcome.

That is not how many, perhaps even most, journalists work. The fault is built into the system. Editors expect reporters to have an angle before they present an idea. Without a hook, assignments are often not made. Editors will deny it, but they expect reporters to have reached some conclusion before they begin reporting, and to report to prove their points. In other words, they routinely ask journalists to put the cart before the horse--an especially troubling phenomenon in this era of political correctness.

Reporters say they are after truth and good. Most are in fact after the big game, the story to make them famous, a kill. Nowadays CNN hires television actors as news anchors. You get the picture. Ironically, on big stories covered by throngs--which I intensely disliked and avoided, and which of course include wars--reporters tend to mimic each other, to sit around after they file, bragging about their prowess. The largest braggarts are also often the least talented.

Institutionalized problems have a depressing effect on journalism. Few stories are black and white. But most present that illusion, although they are products of very little, if any, deductive thought. Certainly, nuances do not surface in short sound bites feeding most news wires. Peter Handke seems to know all this--and a great deal of philosophy.

Serbia aside, this book shows, in near-poetic language, that things are not always as journalists portray them. For that alone, Handke's tiny volume is worth its weight in gold. Alyssa A. Lappen

For someone not to well versed in the history of the recent Balkan war this is a great read. I like the author's insightful historical aspect to the book and his unbiased reporting. It is a book that gives much incentive to think about the people living in that region and the author makes a very honest attempt to be nonjudgmental. If you do not know much about the Balkans and have asked yourself why such violent confrontations have happened there over and over this is certainly a good start. The only negative about this book is the bad editing and the the convoluted sentences that sometimes have to be read over again several times to make sense.

Veteran journalist Simon Winchester retraces his steps through the Balkans 20 years after a brief vacation there, to rediscover a region where the geography is as dizzying as the political and ethnic agendas. His journey from Vienna to Istanbul encompasses the crisis in Kosovo and in a series of astute vignettes, Winchester meets some of the major players and the victims. All around him is a simmering cauldron of hatred which has spilled blood yet again and the issues provoke more questions than can ever be answered. Winchester has questions of his own, but he is unable to answer them in any depth. But then, most Westerners have also had trouble analysing the Balkan history of bloodshed. He is only skimming the surface here and for guidance refers to the great works of Nobel prize winner Ivo Andric, whose book Bridge On The Drina remains a classic text to understanding the background of Balkan turmoil. Unfortunately, Winchester departs Kosovo in June 1999, just after NATO enters the region to restore some semblance of calm. I wish he had remained to write about what happened next. The book fizzles a bit when he goes to Bulgaria. There is now a bewildering plethora of books on recent Balkan upheavals. Winchester's wry observations would serve well as a beginner's guide to one of the most troubled and fascinating places on earth.

The Fracture Zone is one of the most unusual books I have ever read. It provides a mosaic of perspectives on the former Yugoslavia centering on the UN-led end of the most recent conflicts in the region. Although the effect can be a little unsettling, the advantage of the approach is to make the experience more personal and more human than a narrower, more disciplined method would have done.

The book's premise is to share the author's experiences through the context of his former visit during peaceful times to the same region, historical perspective on why and how the tensions and conflicts have evolved, and on-the-ground insights from conversations with those who hate and those who do not.

The effect is not unlike what one's own experiences might have been like if a time machine brought us first into the year 1858 in South Carolina and then in the same area in the year 1865. Without more perspective, someone from Kosovo would not be able to understand what had happened between the two times. That is what the author has been trying to accomplish in this book.

Through flashbacks and narration, you will travel twice (once before the wars, and once after them) through the former Yugoslavia on a journey starting in Vienna and ending in Istanbul. You will have many unforgettable moments, like seeing thousands of displaced refugees squatting in a former alpine meadow while overwhelmed army forces try to save lives. You'll learn what a Sarajevo rose is (no, it's not what you think). And you will find how historical lessons can be used as excuses to fan current hatreds of those who are similar and different from oneself.

All of this has an incredible immediacy because this is like the worst of the Nazi era, being relived in many ways in our own times.

The author keeps asking, why? He poses some answers, but ultimately, it is unanswerable. Perhaps in time, we can make sense of this terrible tragedy.

Here are some cautions: Anyone who wants a serious history will not like this book. Anyone who wants a brilliant essay will be even less satisfied.

If you are open to a new approach to understanding an extremely complex circumstance, you will find this book to be interesting. It will expand your curiosity, and that will be good. We all need to ponder the lessons here, to help avoid their recurrence. Share this book with one other person, so the memory will expand.

This book is an exhaustive account of the events that led to the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of the complex, multiethnic republics that had once comprised Yugoslavia. Laura Silber and Allan Little, drawing largely on interviews with the leading characters on all sides in the conflict, have written a book that will be consulted for generations to come, for diplomacy's sake.

It is perhaps one of the longer books written about the Bosnian war (it does treat the wars in Slovenia and Croatia, respectively, as well as prime readers on the recent history of Yugoslavia in the late 1980s that shaped it for war). While it lacks in the intricate history to be found in Noel Malcolm's history of Bosnia, and the compressed highlights and historical transitions that are illustrated most vividly in Tim Judah's journalistic work about the Serbs, Silber and Little's work is most effective, in this reviewer's view, in meticulously chronicling every detail of the war in Bosnia. The front lines, the politicians, the paramilitary groups, the efforts and experiences of the few peacekeepers, the atrocities and experiences of civilians caught between exchanges of gunfire; Silber and Little have not overlooked anything surrounding Bosnia's demise. However, as the bulk of this book is devoted to Bosnia, the brief background and key events leading to Yugoslavia's demise provided in these pages could be inadequate for some first-time readers of this tragedy.

The revised Penguin Books edition of this book (under review) appeared in 1996. Throughout the dense text are recurrent references to Kosovo, the province from which Slobodan Milosevic, now an indicted war criminal made it to power in Serbia, and later in the rump Yugoslavia. Silber and Little, at that early stage, predicted that worse was yet to come in Kosovo (see pp. 383-384), writing that the post-Dayton police-dominated province with its Albanian majority (and Serb minority) would be influenced by what happened to the rest of the former Yugoslavia. In Silber and Little's words: "A peace settlement based on the principle that statehood derives from ethnicity sent powerful signals to Serbia's minorities...that could lead to further conflict in the future" (p. 384). Once again, the age-old phenomenon of having writing on the wall; Kosovo was a disaster waiting to happen, with advance warning.

Essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the faceted character and nature of a long, gruesome war.

I became involved in the Bosnian crisis in a professional capacity as an intelligence analyst and briefing officer at the headquarters, U.S. European command, and served in Sarajevo with the initial NATO Peace Implementation Force (IFOR). I have been studying and following the history of this area and events in Bosnia ever since. I am familiar with many of the events in the crisis and personalities involved, and found this to be an outstanding summary of the process of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The portion of the book covering the rise of Milosevic and the departure from Yugoslavia of Slovenia is particularly well done. The coverage of the Bosnian war is a bit cursory, and takes the perspective of the conventional wisdom of the international journalistic community. I know from talking to UNPROFOR officers and others who were there that the Muslims were not totally innocent victims and the Serbs universally evil monsters. With that small caveat, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone trying to understand the entire Yugoslav crisis. It is meticulously researched and documented. Anyone trying to understand what is happening in Kosovo right now would be well advised to read this book.

Being closely affected by the entire catastrophy of the last 12 years in Yugoslavia I have read almost everything avaliable on Amazon and in the bookstores pertaining to the subject. This is the Mother Goose of all the books on the last 12 years in the region. One realizes this because all other books quote this one quite often. They are usually recycled or paraphrazed parts of Laura Silber's book. The book is cold and unemotional the way a book about such an event should be. It didnt leave anything out and the sequence of events is perfect. Everything that came after this books publishing was either forshadowed or is just an effect of things in this book. On the other hand if one wants to read books by clowns who were responsible for everything allow me to recommend Slobodan Milosevics' "Years of decisions", Holbrookes "To end a War" (sic. but only when my Q rating is really high), Zimmermanns "Origins of a catastophe"(sic. was blind but now can see). Read this book, understand what and how went on and hold your own against any expert on the subject.

The first line of the fly-leaf says it all. "In 1945, we told the world, NEVER AGAIN. In 1992, we forgot our promise." This illustrated, hard-cover book by Joe Kubert, transports the reader to the battle grounds of Sarajevo during its most perilous times. It serves as a reminder to those of us who remember 1945, yet is important to the youth of the world as a warning. Graphic yet not gory, it is a true story of survival. Mr. Kubert's ability to portray such a historical event in comic book form is ingenious. It's a book you won't be able to put down, but you'll have to, if only to regain your composure. "FAX FROM SARAJEVO" has less pages than "War and Peace," but is a book of epic proportion

In the pages of this book are probably the most heart-gripping images ever put to print. Joe Kubert, a 50 year veteran of the comic book industry and one of the finest graphic storytellers alive, has brought to the world the harrowing tale of cartoonist and publisher Ervin Rustemagic and his family, trapped in Sarajevo during the 1992-93 seige. The plight of short supplies, unseen snipers, an impotent worldwide bureaucracy, the ever-present threat of violent death, the deceptively euphemistic horror of "ethnic cleansing", and no means of escape would have brought weaker people to their knees. Rustemagic's true story of survival, in the purest sense, is a nightmarish, but necessary read, to understand what the Sarajevans endured on a daily basis. Told in a combination of painstakingly detailed panels (some of Joe Kubert's finest work ever), segments of fax transmissions (Rustemagic's only means of contact with the outside world), and a collection of photographs taken during the seige. This is a story that must be told, so the world will not dare forget.

As a University student who is currently studying the topic of genocide, I had my first lesson of what genocide really is after reading Joe Kubert's book "Fax From Sarajevo". Joe Kubert, the author, really opened my eyes to this international problem of war crimes when he explicitly described the atrocious conditions and slaughterous events of the 18 month siege in Bosnia. The story brought me to my knees and put tears in my eyes when I finished reading the documented true life story of a family.

I have such admiration for the Rustemagic family, the author and also my professor for educating me some more on a topic that I was once ignorant on and thought it was a foreign enigma. I was impressed by the families strong will to survive during this murderous event, and leave Bosnia in the middle of an ethnic cleansing campaign by the Serb Army, which could have easily taken their lives.

I highly suggest that future readers of the book take into account that victims and survivors of all genocides are the ones who are the "True Hero's" of war.

A somewhat queer book, but widely regarded as a classic. West is a splendid prose stylist, but not entirely trustworthy as a historian. She flits continually back and forth across the line between fact and fiction, and draws more symbolic meaning and universal truth from any given scene than any mere mortal rightfully ever should. West can be criticized for being almost obsequiously pro-Serbian, narrowly anti-Croat and even bigoted in her aversion to Germans, but her attitudes are easier to understand if one considers the time during which she did her research and writing. The book became controversial in some intellectual circles during the 1990s, as some believe Western policymakers were under the influence of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon when they were late and weak about intervening in the wars of Yugoslav succession. That strikes me as a silly notion. In that West has written 1,150 pages and continually diverges from the main thread of her narrative, I frankly doubt that more than a handful of policymakers-in all countries of the globe combined-ever have read her book from cover to cover. She herself confesses (p. 773) that "hardly anybody will read" her book "by reason of its length." Like War and Peace, Moby Dick and the Holy Bible, this is a literary classic that one should read because it is good for you.

Get this book.

If there is one book you should read, that is pivotal in early 20th Century History, I'd strongly recommend that you read this book. By following Rebecca West's footsteps through Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, she engages you with her trivial and quaint observations of people and places, set against her awesome knowledge of art and history, which is fascinating and worth re-reading time and time again.

And then you realize that this journey took place just before the start of the second world war. What a place to be, what a time to live, what a book to write. It is a long book, no doubt about that. In some respects, it is too short to fully tell the whole story and she helps with a full bibliography and index.

So, get this book and re-live her experiences.

One has to stand in awe before this enormous (ll40 pages) masterpiece of literary travel writing, even with its prejudice and poetry and occasional unkindness. Ms West and her husband and Constantine (he of the stubby fingers and wicked keyboard technique who tells unbelievable stories and opines on every imaginable topic) travel through Yugoslavia at the time Hitler is gaining power in Germany and the Habsburg Empire is just a dirty memory. Constantine is a Serb utterly devoted to the continued existence of the Yugoslav state but he's married to a dreadful hausfrau who despises anything that is not German and especially Slavs. She thus makes her own life miserable and does a number on the lives of everyone else. The book offers rich descriptions of all the states that make up (or made up)Yugoslavia, including religious and social customs, the mental and emotional tendencies of the people (sometimes depending on which outside influences -- Turkish, Austrian -- have impacted them most decisively). Montenegran men come in for high praise because because of their physical beauty and the presumed ease with which they could inseminate any woman. The book is a masterwork of richly textured Enlgish prose done in long, elegant, sometimes convoluted sentence that are a delight to read and may remind some readers of Proust. St. Paul and St. Augustine come in for the mistreatment they so richly deserve (the author traces several questionable religious practices she encounters to ideas found in their writings). This is a work for reasonably well educated adults, so anyone approaching it in search of accurate factual history is making a mistake. But nor will it mislead anyone on matters of historical fact.