Kosovo: A Short History - Softcover

Malcolm, Noel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060977752 ISBN 13: 9780060977757

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 1999

Synopsis

"Malcolm's narrative is gripping, even brilliant at times. . . . He takes to his task with the vigor of a detective driven by true passion. At times his claims are, in terms of Balkan history,quite revolutionary."

About this title

Review

Kosovo, a 55-mile-long plateau in southern Serbia bordering Albania and Macedonia, should by all rights be a historical and political backwater. A Bulgarian geographer who visited Kosovo during World War I remarked that it was "almost as unknown and inaccessible as a stretch of land in Central Africa." The observation would prove ironically fitting by the '90s, as Central Africa and Kosovo both became sites of widespread genocide, fueled by ethnic hatreds, of the deepest international significance. Noel Malcolm, a British historian and journalist who has written extensively about the Balkans (including a companion volume of sorts on Bosnia), provides an overview of Kosovo's long-standing cultural divisions in his "short history" (although, at more than 500 pages, a not so short book).

Readers following the unfolding war in Kosovo through newspaper and television coverage may well ask why ethnic Albanians and Serbs are struggling so violently to command the small region. Kosovo, Malcolm explains, is the birthplace of Serbian nationalism; the defeat of Serbian forces there in 1389 by Turkish troops became emblematic of the fall of the Serbian empire, as it led to Turkish domination of the Balkans. Contemporary warriors of Serbia are, in Malcolm's eyes, evidently attempting to reverse the course of history by reclaiming the land from its Turkish conquerors--but in the absence of the Turks, they'll take it from the Albanians (the largest ethnic group among Kosovo's inhabitants) whose ancestors converted to Islam when the Turks ruled the region. Malcolm's lucid text shows again and again that the ethnic conflict in Kosovo is less a battle over bloodlines and religion than it is one over differing conceptions of national origins and history. "When ordinary Serbs learn to think more rationally and humanely about Kosovo, and more critically about some of their national myths," he concludes, "all the people of Kosovo and Serbia will benefit--not least the Serbs themselves." --Gregory McNamee

About the Author

Noel Malcolm was born in 1956, and studied at Cambridge University, where he gained a starred First in English and a Ph.D in History. Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge from 1981 to 1988, he later became Foreign Editor of the Spectator and political columnist on the Daily Telegraph. His highly acclaimed Bosnia: A Short History was published in 1994.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0060977752
• ISBN 13: 9780060977757
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544