3 Review(s)

This is a searing portrait of the human devastation wrought by the Bosnian wars, and their aftermath - told through the stories of those who are left alive and looking for their families and their remains - by a young writer who has all the makings of a Kapuscinski or a Gourevitch.This book is suitable for readers of Philip Gourevitch, Janine Di Giovanni, Timothy Garton Ash, Slavenka Drakulic, Fergal Keane, Michael Ignatieff, Anna Funder, Misha Glenny.During four years of war in Bosnia, over 100,000 people lost their lives. But it was months, even years, before the mass graves started to yield up their dead and the process of identification, burial and mourning could begin. For many, the waiting, the searching and the suspended grieving still continues.Here we travel through the ravaged post-war landscape in the company of a few of those who survived, as they visit the scenes of their loss: a hall where the clothing of victims is displayed; an underground cave with its pale jumble of bones; a camp for homeless refugees; a city now abandoned to the ghosts of painful memories; and a funeral service where a family finally says goodbye.These encounters are snapshots and memorials, capturing a jagged moment in a community's history as it is still flinching from its raw and recent past, not quite yet able to believe in a possibility of a peaceful future.