Letters from Sarajevo: Voices of a Besieged City - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1852305002 ISBN 13: 9781852305000

Publisher: Element Books Ltd, 1994

Synopsis

Through this extraordinary collection of their letters to relatives and friends living outside the former Yugoslavia, we hear the moving voices of the victims of months of siege and bombardment.
These eighty letters - many of which were smuggled out at great personal risk - with their prayers, their curses, their cries for help and occasional astonishing humour, speak to us in a way no other documentary material can, describing the horror of the tragedy as it unfolds through the seasons of the year. If you have a conscience, the voices of the people of this stricken city will both shock and move you as you share their suffering and marvel at their courage and enduring spirit.
The urgency of bringing these letters to the attention of the outside world has been a race against time for Anna Cataldi, who was entrusted with them by victims's families. Once we have read them, she believes we will no longer be able to ignore the plight of this oppressed people, huddled in a ruined city, trapped in a war that is as fierce as it is forgotten by the world.

About this title

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Italian

From Publishers Weekly

Cataldi, UNICEF's international media consultant in Sarajevo who also wrote the film treatment for Oscar Award-winner Out of Africa , collected these letters from Sarajevo residents to friends and family abroad. Despite the extensive media coverage of the horrors of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, "The truth about this tragic folly can only be told," Cataldi notes, "by those who are involved in it and have no way out." With few exceptions, these letters are from anonymous writers who relate the details of their everyday lives in the besieged city: how many candles they burn, where they get water, how they keep warm, what they scavenge for dinner, who was killed. Although the letters were not intended for public consumption and most are filled with personal references, the homely information about these lives of ordinary people in the midst of terror and destruction have a powerful cumulative impact that Cataldi hopes will evoke a greater humanitarian response to residents' plight. She also recounts her own experiences in Sarajevo and provides a chronology of events.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Element Books Ltd
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1852305002
• ISBN 13: 9781852305000
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208
• Editor: Cataldi Anna, Bardoni Avril