The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War - Hardcover

Tim Butcher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 070118793X ISBN 13: 9780701187934

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2014

Synopsis

Travelling through the Balkans and drawing on his own experiences there as a war correspondent in the 1990s, Tim Butcher follows the journey of Gavrilo Princip, from a village in the mountains to Sarajevo, where he shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

About this title

About the Author

Tim Butcher is a bestselling author and explorer whose books blend history with travel. His first book, Blood River, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and his second, Chasing the Devil, was longlisted for the Orwell Prize. Tim is a former foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. He lives in Cape Town with his family.

Gerard Doyle records everything from adult, young adult, and children's books to literary fiction, mysteries, humor, adventure, and fantasy. He has won countless AudioFile Earphones Awards and was named a Best Voice in Young Adult Fiction in 2008.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In a uniquely effective counterpart to Margaret MacMillan’s fine account of the run-up to WWI (The War That Ended Peace, 2013), author Butcher, who covered the 1990s Balkans conflict for the Daily Telegraph, returns to Bosnia and Herzegovina to literally retrace the steps of young Gavrilo Princip, who at age 19 assassinated the heir-apparent to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a killing that triggered the Great War 100 years ago. Butcher, whose maternal grandmother’s older brother died in that appallingly tragic conflict, follows Princip’s path from his tiny, near-destitute mountain village of Obljaj to Sarajevo, where he found a cohort of young firebrands like himself, bridling under the harsh economic and political conditions imposed on Bosnians by the empire. Along the way, Butcher renders the countryside and cityscapes—and the people who inhabit them—in fine detail, while also moving back and forth in time, taking in the Ottoman rule, the political climate of the early 1900s, the recent Bosnian war, and the landscape as it looks today. Top-notch reporting by a journalist who knows the lay of the land, as he also keeps a healthy remove from an ethnic conflict that, like a dormant volcano, still seethes. --Alan Moores

Edition details

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 070118793X
• ISBN 13: 9780701187934
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352