Synopsis
Journalist Tim Judah’s classic account, now brought fully up to date to include the overthrow of Miloševic, the assassination of Zoran Djindic, the breakaway of Kosovo, and the arrest of Radovan Karadžic.
Praise for the first edition:
"A lively and balanced history of the Serbs."Aleksa Djilas,New York Times Book Review
"Judah writes splendidly. . . .The story he tells does much to explain both the Serb obsession with the treachery of outsiders and their quasi-religious faith in the eventual founding, or rather reestablishment, of the Serbian state."Mark Danner, New York Review of Books
"Judah's book is probably the best attempt to date to explain the calamitous situation of the Serbs today through a meticulous consideration of the Serb past."David Rieff,Toronto Globe and Mail
Tim Judah was Balkans correspondent for the London Times and theEconomist, and has been a frequent contributor The New York Review of Books.
Reviews
Stressing the Serbs' misuse and mythologizing of history, Judah offers an insightful, informed, and trenchant consideration of their history and their collective outlook. The Serbs is a stylish and highly readable account by an experienced journalist who has written for the London Times and the Economist. Its strength as a primer for a general readership lies in Judah's ability--unprecedented among recent journalistic accounts of the current Balkan wars--to make the behavior of individual Serbs and their leaders comprehensible by placing them in the context of Serbian and Balkan history. His presentation is nuanced, focused, and rich with motifs that he follows from the Middle Ages to the present: massive migrations, banditry and widespread violence, militias, ethnic cleansing, and enduring myths of religious and national identity (most importantly, those surrounding the Battle of Kosovo), among others. Significantly, Judah understands the deep and important nature of ties between Serbia and the Serbs outside the country proper, and explains the similarities and differences between the contemporary situation and the past. Especially effective are his citations from texts by eyewitnesses to events in Serbian history (the Balkan wars, rebellions against the Ottomans, WW II) that sound as if they were written yesterday. Judah's study will, of course, offend Serbs mightily. About the anti-Muslim sentiments in Njego's The Mountain Wreath (Serbia's most revered literary classic) he sensibly offers this view: ``Literature that elsewhere would have long been banned from schools is still, subconsciously or not, shaping the worldview of Serbian children.'' He also asserts that, when faced with the Bosnian question, ``many national and sane Serbs simply cease to function as such. They prefer their own long-held convictions to facts which would force them to rethink everything they hold dear.'' Judah's excellent book stands out in a cluttered field, offering the key to Serbia's behavior over the past decade. In Serbia, Judah observes, ``It is what people believe rather than what is true that matters.'' -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Judah, a correspondent for the LondonTimes and the Economist, satisfies a critical need in the burgeoning literature of the former Yugoslavia by focusing on a single nation. Yugoslavia's destruction emerges less as an event of malicious volition than as the consequence of the "lie" of South Slav unity after World War I. This perspective combines a broad interpretation of nationalism in Serbia proper with the involvement of outside actors and the Serb diaspora. Judah is at his best in depicting the Serbs' powerful myths about their history, their post-World War II repression, and their exploitation by Slobodan Milo sevi'c. For all its detail, this is not a history of Serbia but a work of interpretation whose judgment on recent events is controversial. Neither minimizing the region's historical violence nor exculpating those responsible, the author shuns the simplistic platitudes of religous atavism for a more complex "cycle of vengeance" throughout the area. The book's scope and quality recommend it a place alongside such durable works as Ivo Banac's The National Question in Yugoslavia (1984). For all academic and larger public libraries.?Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ., Erie
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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