The War Is Dead, Long Live The War. Bosnia: The Reckoning

Description

The year 2012 marks the twentieth anniversary of the onset of the worst carnage to blight Europe since the reign of the Third Reich - the Bosnian War. A hurricane of violence was unleashed by Serbian President Slobodan Milo'evic and his allies, the Bosnian Serbs, in pursuit of a 'Greater Serbia'. An infamous campaign of 'ethnic cleansing' demanded the annihilation of all Bosniaks, Croats and other people through either death or enforced deportation, with any trace of their existence destroyed. Such brutality was presided over and tolerated by the so-called 'International Community' including, perhaps most vividly in the popular memory, concentration and death camps in our lifetime. It was Vulliamy's accursed honour to reveal these camps to the world in August 1992, when he penetrated both Omarska and Trnopolje. "The War is Dead, Long Live the War" charts this discovery, but it is much more than a memoir: Vulliamy passionately bears witness to the Bosnian war's aftermath, revealing the human consequences as well as the trials and traumas of exile or homecoming. It is only now, through the eyes and memories of the survivors and the bereaved - and, in different ways, the perpetrators - that we can really understand the bloody catastrophe in Bosnia. The world moves on over twenty years, but in Bosnia, there has been no thaw in the hatred; no reckoning. The war may be over, but the war lives on.

Promotion info

Part memoir and part reckoning, this is a startling examination of the legacy of the Bosnian war published on the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the war.

Reviews

"Haunting" -- Ed Caesar Sunday Times "The camps and their corrosive legacy are Vulliamy's subject in this searing book, in which he writes with controlled and righteous anger about the absence of any "reckoning" -- David Blair Saturday Telegraph "There are stories of human resilience here that are quite extraordinary, and deeply moving. This is a book that will bring tears to the eyes of any reader... Vulliamy's writing is animated not only by sympathy but also, at a deep level by a glowing sense of injustice" -- Noel Malcolm Telegraph "Vulliamy can describe barbarism and suffering with merciless clarity... In this book he follows the war and its consequences and knows its lessons should not be forgotten" -- Mark Brennock Irish Times "A beautifully written and deeply felt study in survival" Sunday Business Post

Author description

Ed Vulliamy is a journalist and writes for the Guardian and Observer. For his work in Bosnia, Italy, the US and Iraq he has won a James Cameron Award and an Amnesty International Media Award and has been named International Reporter of the Year (twice) and runner-up at the Foreign Press Association Awards. In 1996 he became the first journalist to testify at an international crimes court, at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia. A believer in the duty of journalists to testify in matters of humanitarian law, he has since lectured extensively on the subject. Twitter: @edvulliamy