Fascinating and Touching Insight, 16 Jul 2006
I read this book almost all in one go, it was such a great read. It's hard to find a book that really describes what post-communist life is like in the Eastern European & Baltic regions. I've travelled several times through Eastern Europe and have sifted through many different historical books about similar themes trying to get a better understanding for what it must really be like, but none of it could bring me directly to the heart of the matter as Slavenka Drakulic's writing did.
an valuable insight..., 04 Mar 2003
I would wholeheartedly recommend Draculic's book to anyone who wonders what has happened to Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of Communism almost fifteen years ago. The author writes lucidly about her own experiences of life under a communist regime, and her thoughts on the development of former Communist countries since 1989/90. Having studied History at university, I felt that perhaps the appeal of the book might be limited to like-minded people, but every friend that I have recommended it to has found it interesting and enjoyable. I read it whilst travelling through Central Europe, and it made me realise that whilst cities such as Prague, Budapest and Warsaw may now have the outward trappings of Western capitalism, this does not reflect the situation below the surface, in the attitudes of citizens, and their memories of the very recent past.
re: Cafe Europa, 21 Jun 2002
Astonishing book! Will keep you reading long after bedtime! For the people from former Yugoslavia is perfectly understandable, also for anyone who is from Balkan, or even been there once, or willing to know tremendous charm. They can find themselfs somewhere in the pages! Autor has a great knowledge and a rare compassion, she can wrap plattitude in nice worlds, and make you laugh.
Insight tempered by frustration, 06 Jul 2001
Drakulic writes with a scientific precision: she subjects the trivial elements of daily life to an analytical intelligence to make them reveal the essence of life in post-communist Eastern and Central Europe. Her anger is palpable but her dry wit never allows the work to become a 'rant,' and her ideas are persuasive without being bludgeoning. The only essay I disagreed with was her assertion that the disparity between the state of Americans' teeth and those of Eastern Europeans was a consequence of lack of self-esteem left over from communism. I'd thought it was a consequence of American neurosis!
Excellent read., 27 Jan 2000
I thought it was touching yet also clever and funny. Not exactly what I expected when a friend told me about it. Funny is not the first thing that comes to mind when talking about an central european feminist but this book changed my mind. Bravo
Confirmation Again.., 15 May 2006
The author states her case in a compelling and gripping manner that draws the reader in and makes him/her ask themselves what would they do if they were in that position. She does it in a way that exposes both the savagery and the emotion that was present throughout the conflict.
She does it from a point of view that should be biased but is not. She states her case and explains why she believes that many would do what the perpetrators did in that instant.
Those who state they have studied the Balkans extensively and accuse this book of bias do so without knowledge at all for only by being there and living through it can anyone have believed what was happening. I did. I saw horror, murder, pain and hurt inflicted by all sides. I also saw humour, strength, life and abhorrence at what was happening. This book explains it from one side, NOT against any other.
The people of the Balkans have been through Hell itself and are trying to emerge from the other side. Maybe this book is the beginning of an attempt to understand and in doing so, stop it happening again.
To anyone who wishes to see what happens, it is vital that you read this. It will shock. It will tear at your heart and your mind. It may also open your eyes.
its not just about who did what, 28 Apr 2006
Other reviews for this book are picking out the bias viewpoint of the author, yes the majority of the accused in the book are Serbian and none are Muslim.
That never occurred to me reading the book, i wasn't looking at what ethnic group each of the perpetrators were in. What the author does is she looks at the lives of these men and women prior to the war.
The book is an exploration of her own quest for understanding. She is trying to see WHY these people, people that she could relate to and were so similar to her own friends and family, could kill hundreds of innocent civilians. She is trying to understand the psyche of the accused. She is not biased in her actual writing, she only uses ethnicity in her explainations of who people are - she doesn't say anything like "the Serbs were the worst". The book is not about what ethicity did what - its about the individuals and WHY they did what they did.
It is beautifully written, and thought provoking, it makes you think - if i were in that situation would i have behaved the same as the accused? We each hope that we wouldn't, that we could keep our humanity, but this book makes you think would i be able to?
seems biased, 03 Mar 2006
As an Englishman, who has studied the Balkans, extensively, I cannot believe that , yet again we have an example of an anti-Serb book.
There were atrocities commited on all sides. Yet it seems that only books written by Croats or Bosnian Muslims make it into the UK. They are incredibly biased. Study the trial of Milosevic and you will discover there were far fewer acts of atrocity than you would believe, some witnesses called werent even there, but were asked to describe what happened!
As regards Srebrenica, it is a good point that there is no way of knowing how many died and whether they were Serbs or Muslims. Ask Naser Oric, he stated that there was bad stuff done by both sides in and around Srebrenica, as there was a mass slaughter of Serb villagers(not just the men) that preceded this take over of Srebrenica by the Serbs
Humanity and inhuman acts, 02 Aug 2005
I work in an Embassy in Belgrade dealing on a daily basis with the aftermath of what these people in The Hague did. This book is a short, easily readable introduction to the reasons why these seemingly ordinary characters did unspeakable things to their former countrymen. I regularly recomend this little known book to new colleagues.
An interesting book to read but still biased, 29 Jul 2004
Slavenka Drakulic has written a well constructed and interesting book. However, she only reserves two chapters on Croat war criminals (and both chapters cover the same crimes and war criminals) and the rest of the book is devoted to analysing and discussing Serbian war criminals.
She states in the introduction that it is a "coincidence" that there are no Bosnian Muslim case studies in her book but I believe that she deliberately left them out. Drakulic herself is a Croat and no doubt is quite biased (and understandably so) concerning the last Balkan war.
Concerning Srebrenica, there is a point in the book where she comes up with the figure of 7,445 Muslim men executed at the hands of the Bosnian Serbs. However, until today, just under 5,000 bodies have been discovered in mass graves around the Srebrenica area, and many of them have not been identified.
Leading up to the Srebrenica massacre, there were many clashes between Muslims and Serbs in the area, and many Serb civilians were also murdered, so there is no way to know whether these bodies were, in fact, all Muslims. I just wonder where she got such a precise figure from, particularly since near the start of the book, she estimates that over 7,000 Muslim men were executed. There is a big difference between an estimate and a precise figure.
chilling, intensely beautiful and challenging, 07 Jul 2001
A deeply chilling read which manages to retain the reader's attention even whilst revealing the basics of the plot in the first few pages. The book will quite rightly be remembered for dealing with a taboo subject, but this may actually be a shame because some of the writing is extremely poetic and beautiful; the type of writing which you almost wish had formed a poem because it is easy to skim over and forget such wonderful lines as "All that mattered was the sky above, and the way his eyes reflected it."
So despite the subject matter there is much of meaning for more 'traditional' lovers to find. The author creates a greater intensity of the feelings we all have through her choice of plot and subject matter. The challenge may be to consider exactly how far we are different to the heroine.
Definitely worth reading but a shame that some readers may, understandably enough, miss some of the beauty on account of the horror.
