TOL STORE BY COUNTRY "Bosnia & Herzegovina"

Sacco translates the events in Bosnia into graphic novel format. An indispensable document of the conflict. Sacco spent four months in Bosnia, between 1995-1996, immersing himself in the human side of life during wartime, researching stoires that are rarely found in conventional news coverage. Here he focuses on the Muslim enclave of Gorazde, which was beseiged by Bosnian Serbs during the war. The book is strongly compared to the Pulitzer prize winner Maus, and advance praise rate it as being one of the most important documents to emerge from the conflict as it portrays day to day life at the heart of these events.

INVESTIGATING THE PEACE. When bombs are falling and western journalism is the only game left in town "fixers" are the people who sell war correspondents the human tragedy and moral outrage that makes news editors happy. American Book Award-winning comix-journalist Joe Sacco introduces us to his own fixer; a man looking to squeeze the last bit of profit from Bosnia before the reconstruction begins. Thanks to the fixer Sacco uncovers the story of warlords and gangsters running the countryside in wartime. Ten years later Sacco returns to Bosnia to look for his fixer. What he finds makes him wonder, who won the war? And who won the peace?

In May 1992, as Bosnian Serb forces were advancing on Srebrenica, thousands of people fled to the town looking for a safe haven. For many of them, this would prove to be a fatal decision.

Serb forces continued to attack the town, preventing food and supplies from coming in, and killing anyone who tried to get out. As more and more refugees fled to Srebrenica from the surrounding villages in search of safety conditions became unbearable. Life could be bought for a few cigarettes. At night small children followed their parents on treacherous searches for food, and were often maimed or killed in the process. Teachers murdered former students, doctors murdered former patients - the guiding principle was to kill or be killed. Finally, after three years of agony, Srebrenica was destroyed. In July 1995 the town fell and over seven thousand men were massacred in cold blood.

Against all odds, Emir Suljagic survived siege and massacre. He dedicates his moving testimony to the memory of the victims of genocide.

A man stands at the entrance to a narrow 'sniper's corridor', struck by a shaft of light, deliberating whether or not to dash across; a couple embrace lovingly on a terrace overlooking Sarajevo; in a tavern a young man, intoxicated by wine, breaks into song while another looks on ironically; turbaned Muslims pray facing Mecca in a Bosnian meadow; a human skull is matched to a photograph of its former face.

The presence of death is felt in Paul Lowe's photographs: war and its terrors are evoked in images notable for their stillness, reminding us that exploding buildings and screaming faces are only the most obvious ways of showing devastation. But here is life too, for the Bosnians have survived, mourned and moved forward. Lovers, harvesters, old men, rambunctious children and fashionable boulevardiers populate this book, as do images of snowy fields, rebuilt bridges, and parties.

The accompanying text includes commentary by veteran BBC correspondent Allan Little, as well as a number of acute observations from various Balkan writers and newsmakers (along with anonymous graffiti), and deftly supplements the visual power of this work by a still-young photojournalist at the height of his powers.

Balkan Ghosts : A Journey Through History

From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare now sweeping Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. This enthralling and often chilling political travelogue fully deciphers the Balkans' ancient passions and intractable hatreds for outsiders. For as Kaplan travels among the vibrantly-adorned churches and soul-destroying slums of the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, he allows us to see the region's history as a time warp in which Slobodan Milosevic becomes the reincarnation of a fourteenth-century Serbian martyr; Nicolae Ceaucescu is called "Drac," or "the Devil"; and the one-time Soviet Union turns out to be a continuation of the Ottoman Empire.

The Ethics of Researching War: Looking for Bosnia

Developed through a series of encounters with a Bosnian Serb soldier, Looking for Bosnia is a meditation on the possibilities and limitations of responding to the extreme violence of the Bosnian war. The book explores the ethics of confronting the war criminal and investigates the possibility of responsibility not just to victims of war and war crimes, but also to the perpetrators of violence. As such, Looking for Bosnia is a consideration of the human encounter, exploring the political and scholarly strategies through which the "human" is often dismissed as "inhuman". The book exposes the complexity of the categories of good and evil.

Flag on the Mountain: A Political Anthropology of War in Croatia And Bosnia-Herzegovina 1990-1995

Graham McMaster (Translator), Celia Hawkesworth (Translator)
In this substantial work, Ivo Zanic explores the ways in which cultural-historical motifs and myths have been deployed to reinforce the war policies of nationalist regimes in the former Yugoslavia. Published in association with the Bosnian Institute.

Aspects of Balkan Culture: Social, Political, and Literary Perceptions

The selected essays present a palimpsest of sorts aiming to elucidate the multifaceted responses to major historical events facing the ethnically diverse population of the Balkan Peninsula. The essays dealing with the Eastern Question were written at the time when the recent civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was replicating the Eastern Question in its current phase. The juxtaposition of everyday public discourse, literary renderings, ordinances, petitions, so called 'preventive censorship' of the press, denials, and appeals provide new points of view enhancing the under- standing of social and political circumstances in the occupied provinces. Several essays examine the assessments of the Eastern Question by outstanding historians and writers. The essays devoted to the ideological, literary, and fine-arts issues trace the cultural scene during the twentieth century. "The latest book by Jelena Milojkoviæ-Djuriæ covers her familiar domain, the Balkans and the fate of the Slavic people, especially the Serbs. Her span of topics will satisfy both the connoisseurs of the area and more general readers. Professor Djuriæ moves with ease from one historical era to another, from the fateful events of the 19th and 20th centuries to con- temporary writers, from evils of occupation to the struggle for freedom. In a word, a remarkably pertinent study for those interested in under- standing the Balkan powder keg, even today." - Vasa Mihailovich, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "Jelena Milojkoviæ-Djuriæ, noted scholar of the Balkans, has assembled in one impressive volume a number of critically important, well crafted essays on Balkan history, culture, literature, and religion. Her treatment of the Eastern Question is particularly valuable in a volume which pro- vides scholars, students, and others interested in this fascinating and turbulent area of the world, with a wealth of information to digest and consider." - Donald L. Dyer, Professor of Russian and Linguistics, University of Mississippi. Editor of Balkanistica.

Politics of Ethnic Cleansing: Nation-State Building and Provision of In/Security in Twentieth-Century Balkans

This book sheds light on the causes and consequences of ethnic cleansing in twentieth-century Balkans with particular reference to the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Providing a thorough and consistent analysis of large-scale episodes of ethnic cleansing in modern Balkan history, Politics of Ethnic Cleansing fills an important gap in existing conflict and peace studies literature. Offering a top-down interpretation of the expulsion of ethno-national minorities as a means of state-building, the analysis rests on a fresh, multidimensional approach, which provides an eclectic discussion of nationalism, politics, and security. This book establishes an agenda for policymaking and future research by making specific proposals for clearing up the present ambiguities in international humanitarian law related to ethnic cleansing, rethinking humanitarian intervention with a view to restoring the long-term viability of the target states, and repudiating the argument for forced homogenization as a conflict resolution strategy.

John Taylor’s brilliant new book examines the work of many of the major poets who have deeply marked modern and contemporary European literature. Venturing far and wide from the France in which he has lived since the late 1970s, the polyglot writer-critic not only delves into the more widely translated literatures of Italy, Greece, Germany, and Austria, but also discovers impressive and overlooked work in Slovenia, Bosnia, Hungary, Finland, Norway, and the Netherlands in this book that ranges over nearly all of Europe, including Russia.

While providing this stimulating and far-ranging critical panorama, Taylor brings to light key themes of European writing: the depth of everyday life, the quest of the “thing-in-itself,” metaphysical aspiration and anxiety, the dialectics of negativity and affirmation, subjectivity and self-effacement, and uprootedness as a category that is as ontological as it is geographical, historical, political, or cultural. The book pays careful attention to the intersection of writing and history (or politics), as several poets featured here have faced the Second World War, the Holocaust, Communism, the fall of Communism, or the war in the former Yugoslavia.

Taylor gives the work of renowned, upcoming, and still little-known poets a thorough look, all the while scrutinizing recent translations of their verse. He highlights several poets who are also masters of the prose poem. He includes a few novelists who have fashioned a particularly original kind of poetic prose, that stylistic category that has proved so difficult for critics to define. Into the Heart of European Poetry should be of immediate interest to any reader curious about the aesthetic and philosophical ideas underlying major trends of contemporary European writing. In a day and age when much too little is translated and thus known about foreign literature, and when Europeans themselves are pondering the common denominators of their own culture, this book is as indispensable as it is engaging.

Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia

In 1992, Savo Heleta was a young Serbian boy enjoying an idyllic, peaceful childhood in Gorazde, a primarily Muslim city in Bosnia. At the age of just thirteen, Savo’s life was turned upside down as war broke out. When Bosnian Serbs attacked the city, Savo and his family became objects of suspicion overnight. Through the next two years, they endured treatment that no human being should ever be subjected to. Their lives were threatened, they were shot at, terrorized, put in a detention camp, starved, and eventually stripped of everything they owned. But after two long years, Savo and his family managed to escape. And then the real transformation took place.

From his childhood before the war to his internment and eventual freedom, we follow Savo’s emotional journey from a young teenager seeking retribution to a peace-seeking diplomat seeking healing and reconciliation. As the war unfolds, we meet the incredible people who helped shape Savo’s life, from his brave younger sister Sanja to Meho, the family friend who would become the family’s ultimate betrayer. Through it all, we begin to understand this young man’s arduous struggle to forgive the very people he could no longer trust. At once powerful and elegiac, Not My Turn to Die offers a unique look at a conflict that continues to fascinate and enlighten us.

Peace and Punishment: The Secret Wars of Politics and International Justice

Florence Hartmann, former spokeswoman for Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), is the first senior official of the ICTY to have written a book discussing its inner workings (Paix et chatiment: Les guerres secretes de la politique et de la justice internationales, Flammarion, 2007). She has used her eyewitness’s insight into the inner workings of the ICTY to support her blistering critique of the failure of the Western alliance to support the cause of justice for the former Yugoslavia. Her book paints a portrait of Western powers, above all the US, Britain and France, stifling the ICTY and preventing the arrest of war-criminals through a combination of obstruction, manipulation, mutual rivalry and sheer inertia.

Language and Identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and Its Disintegration

Against a backdrop of the ethnic strife in the Balkans and the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, Robert Greenberg describes how the languages of Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro came into being and shows how their genesis reflects ethnic, religious, and political identity. His first-hand observations before and after Communism offer insights into the nature of language change and the relation between language and identity.

Peacebuilding in the Balkans: The View from the Ground Floor

After suffering years of war, Bosnia is now the target of international efforts to reconstruct and democratize a culturally divided society. The global community's strategy has focused on reforming political institutions, influencing the behavior of elite populations, and cultivating nongovernmental organizations. But expensive efforts to promote a stable peace and a multiethnic democracy can be successful only if they resonate among ordinary people. Otherwise, such projects will produce fragile institutions and alienated citizens who will be susceptible to extremists eager to send them back into war. Paula M. Pickering challenges the conventional wisdom that common people are merely passive recipients of peacebuilding projects. Instead, in Peacebuilding in the Balkans, she shows how ordinary people, particularly minorities in Bosnia, understand elite rhetoric and actively shape reconstruction.


Pickering's years of fieldwork—direct observation, interviews, and analysis of many surveys—has yielded a precise understanding of how ordinary citizens react to and influence peacebuilding programs in their neighborhoods, workplaces, municipal agencies, and other real-life social settings. The evidence suggests that international efforts to rebuild an inclusive Bosnia will be futile unless they pay sufficient attention to citizens' varying ties to ethnic groups, indigenous forms of civic activity, and the development of nondiscriminatory employment and responsive political institutions. Pickering's insights from reconstruction in the Balkans have important implications for peacebuilding elsewhere in Eurasia.

Behind the Curtain: Travels in Eastern European Football

From the war-ravaged streets of Sarajevo, where turning up for training involved dodging snipers' bullets, to the crumbling splendor of Budapest's Bozsik Stadium, where the likes of Puskas and Kocsis masterminded the fall of England, the landscape of Eastern Europe has changed immeasurably since the fall of communism. Jonathan Wilson has traveled extensively behind the old Iron Curtain, viewing life beyond the fall of the Berlin Wall through the lens of soccer. Where once the state-controlled teams of the Eastern bloc passed their way with crisp efficiency—a sort of communist version of total soccer—to considerable success on the European and international stages, today the beautiful game in the East has been opened up to the free market, and throughout the region a sense of chaos pervades. The threat of totalitarian interference no longer remains; but in its place mafia control is generally accompanied with a crippling lack of funds. Jonathan Wilson goes in search of the spirit of Hungary's Golden Squad of the early 1950s; charts the disintegration of the soccer superpower that was the former Yugoslavia; follows a sorry tale of corruption, mismanagement, and Armenian cognac through the Caucasuses; reopens the case of Russia's greatest soccer player, Eduard Streltsov; and talks to Jan Tomaszewski about an autumn night at Wembley in 1973.