Madness Visible: A Memoir of War
- Book Review,
by Janine Di Giovanni
From Publishers Weekly
"It is only possible to love one war," writes di Giovanni in this devastating memoir of the Balkans, quoting another intrepid war journalist, Martha Gellhorn. For Gellhorn, it was the Spanish Civil War; for di Giovanni, it's the series of conflicts that, since 1991, have consumed the republics of the former Yugoslavia. Expanded from a Vanity Fair article, this book presents a harrowing firsthand account of a region's spiral into madness. Di Giovanni, a senior foreign correspondent for The Times (London), was there almost from the beginning: she shuddered through the first icy winter of the Sarajevo siege (the longest in modern history); she sipped tea with Arkan, the dreaded leader of the ethnic-cleansing paramilitary Tigers; she stood shoulder to shoulder with Serb revolutionaries on "Day One" of the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic. The book deals primarily with di Giovanni's experiences covering the most recent war-1999's conflict in Kosovo-but it moves through time from the initial dissolution of Yugoslavia to the most recent, guardedly optimistic attempts at reconstruction. Di Giovanni provides ample historical context to the fighting (readers seeking to understand the separatist impulse of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church or Milosevic's "mother complex" have plenty of evidence to play with), but eventually, the names and dates of massacres and treaties pale next to the spectacle of pure horror: a dog trotting by with a human hand in its mouth; a crazed woman lying naked in full view of snipers, begging to be shot. Di Giovanni has written a tragic book that vividly memorializes the millions who suffered in the name of religion, nationality and ego. Map not seen by PW.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Anglo-American journalist di Giovanni assembles and extends her war reportage from the Balkans into an impressive overview of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. She reports the dreary and appalling events since the death of Tito and, especially, since 1992 in better prose than a good deal of the competition commands, though not even her accounts of individual survival and suffering break much new ground. She points the finger of blame squarely at the Serbs, however, for taking actions without which there would have been no crisis and whose dream of a greater Serbia is definitely as bloodthirsty as that of a Judenfrei Europe. She is also blunt about foreign intervention having been too little and too late, leaving NATO and the UN with blood on their hands and the real prospect of Balkan ethnic brawls erupting again for the World War I centennial. In all, a worthwhile discussion of whether the influence of the violence-never-settles-anything mentality now causes more violence than it prevents. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Devastating...A first hand account of a region's spiral into madness' --Publisher's Weekly (starred, lead review)
"Wholly memorable, entirely unsettling: one of the best piece of reportage to come from the Balkan abattoir" --Kirkus (starred review)
"Janine DiGiovani has described war in a way that almost makes me think it never needs to be described again. This is it, modern war: If you don't want to know what it's really like, don't pick up this book. More than a book about war, however, this is a book about the human race, in all its anguishing complexity. I can honestly say that I finished this book a wiser, more compassionate person than when I started." --Sebastian Junger
"Modern war has become ever more Satanic, and never more so than in the Balkans in the 1990s. Janine di Giovanni is our Virgil, guiding us through the circles of that man-made hell: Sarajevo, Kosovo, Pristina. Her depictions of the fighting recall the best correspondence to come out of the Spanish Civil War. Her portraits of the victims are moving, but she really shines in bringing to chilling life the perpetrators of "ethnic cleansing" -- today's euphemism for genocide. Anyone who still believes, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that intelligence, education, prosperity and cultural refinement immunize the human soul to evil must read her descriptions of professors, psychiatrists, and other intellectuals who chose to become monsters on the same level as the Nazis. If you read no other book about the Balkan wars, read this one. " --Phil Caputo
“Janine di Giovanni is superb–an extraordinarily brave war correspondent and a wonderful writer as well. What a combination!” --William Shawcross
"Janine di Giovanni took ten years out of her life to report on all those terrible wars in the former Yugoslavia. She tells us what it was really like on the frontline -- the squalor, the terror, the barbarity, and the randomness of death. But there was also comradeshiop, hope, glory and, occasionally, the triumph of the human spirit." --Phillipp Knightley, author of The First Casualty: The War Correspondent As Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo
Review
"Devastating...A first hand account of a region's spiral into madness' --Publisher's Weekly (starred, lead review)
"Wholly memorable, entirely unsettling: one of the best piece of reportage to come from the Balkan abattoir" --Kirkus (starred review)
"Janine DiGiovani has described war in a way that almost makes me think it never needs to be described again. This is it, modern war: If you don't want to know what it's really like, don't pick up this book. More than a book about war, however, this is a book about the human race, in all its anguishing complexity. I can honestly say that I finished this book a wiser, more compassionate person than when I started." --Sebastian Junger
"Modern war has become ever more Satanic, and never more so than in the Balkans in the 1990s. Janine di Giovanni is our Virgil, guiding us through the circles of that man-made hell: Sarajevo, Kosovo, Pristina. Her depictions of the fighting recall the best correspondence to come out of the Spanish Civil War. Her portraits of the victims are moving, but she really shines in bringing to chilling life the perpetrators of "ethnic cleansing" -- today's euphemism for genocide. Anyone who still believes, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that intelligence, education, prosperity and cultural refinement immunize the human soul to evil must read her descriptions of professors, psychiatrists, and other intellectuals who chose to become monsters on the same level as the Nazis. If you read no other book about the Balkan wars, read this one. " --Phil Caputo
?Janine di Giovanni is superb?an extraordinarily brave war correspondent and a wonderful writer as well. What a combination!? --William Shawcross
"Janine di Giovanni took ten years out of her life to report on all those terrible wars in the former Yugoslavia. She tells us what it was really like on the frontline -- the squalor, the terror, the barbarity, and the randomness of death. But there was also comradeshiop, hope, glory and, occasionally, the triumph of the human spirit." --Phillipp Knightley, author of The First Casualty: The War Correspondent As Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo
Book Description
From an internationally celebrated war correspondent, a searing firsthand chronicle–told with extraordinary immediacy–of the ordeal of the Balkan people during the continuing breakup of Yugoslavia.
As a reporter for The Times of London, Janine di Giovanni found herself a close witness to the cycles of violence and vengeance in cities and villages, in refugee camps, in slapped-together hospitals, and in the homes of citizens under siege. She begins her story in May 1999 in Kosovo. The world believes the Balkan wars are over, but violence persists. She follows the arc of the war from its earliest days through the staggering experience of the people who endured it: soldiers numbed by–and inured to–the atrocities they commit, women driven to despair by their life in paramilitary rape camps, civilians (di Giovanni among them) caught in bombing raids of uncertain origin, babies murdered in hate-induced rage.
She searches for the motives of the leaders who created this hell: Slobodan Milosevic and his wife, Mira Markovic, and such crucial though less well-known figures as Nikola Koljevic, who directed the siege–and accomplished the destruction–of Sarajevo, the city he claimed to love.
Di Giovanni’s story raises profoundly challenging questions: What can cause neighbors who have lived peacefully side by side for centuries to turn against one another with mindless brutality? What becomes of survivors when the fabric of an age-old community is destroyed? How should other governments react to mass murder in a neighboring country?
Acutely perceptive, unflinching, making the madness of war visible, this is an important work of reportage from the physical and psychological front lines.
From the Inside Flap
From an internationally celebrated war correspondent, a searing firsthand chronicle–told with extraordinary immediacy–of the ordeal of the Balkan people during the continuing breakup of Yugoslavia.
As a reporter for The Times of London, Janine di Giovanni found herself a close witness to the cycles of violence and vengeance in cities and villages, in refugee camps, in slapped-together hospitals, and in the homes of citizens under siege. She begins her story in May 1999 in Kosovo. The world believes the Balkan wars are over, but violence persists. She follows the arc of the war from its earliest days through the staggering experience of the people who endured it: soldiers numbed by–and inured to–the atrocities they commit, women driven to despair by their life in paramilitary rape camps, civilians (di Giovanni among them) caught in bombing raids of uncertain origin, babies murdered in hate-induced rage.
She searches for the motives of the leaders who created this hell: Slobodan Milosevic and his wife, Mira Markovic, and such crucial though less well-known figures as Nikola Koljevic, who directed the siege–and accomplished the destruction–of Sarajevo, the city he claimed to love.
Di Giovanni’s story raises profoundly challenging questions: What can cause neighbors who have lived peacefully side by side for centuries to turn against one another with mindless brutality? What becomes of survivors when the fabric of an age-old community is destroyed? How should other governments react to mass murder in a neighboring country?
Acutely perceptive, unflinching, making the madness of war visible, this is an important work of reportage from the physical and psychological front lines.
From the Back Cover
"Devastating...A first hand account of a region's spiral into madness' --Publisher's Weekly (starred, lead review)
"Wholly memorable, entirely unsettling: one of the best piece of reportage to come from the Balkan abattoir" --Kirkus (starred review)
"Janine DiGiovani has described war in a way that almost makes me think it never needs to be described again. This is it, modern war: If you don't want to know what it's really like, don't pick up this book. More than a book about war, however, this is a book about the human race, in all its anguishing complexity. I can honestly say that I finished this book a wiser, more compassionate person than when I started." --Sebastian Junger
"Modern war has become ever more Satanic, and never more so than in the Balkans in the 1990s. Janine di Giovanni is our Virgil, guiding us through the circles of that man-made hell: Sarajevo, Kosovo, Pristina. Her depictions of the fighting recall the best correspondence to come out of the Spanish Civil War. Her portraits of the victims are moving, but she really shines in bringing to chilling life the perpetrators of "ethnic cleansing" -- today's euphemism for genocide. Anyone who still believes, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that intelligence, education, prosperity and cultural refinement immunize the human soul to evil must read her descriptions of professors, psychiatrists, and other intellectuals who chose to become monsters on the same level as the Nazis. If you read no other book about the Balkan wars, read this one. " --Phil Caputo
“Janine di Giovanni is superb–an extraordinarily brave war correspondent and a wonderful writer as well. What a combination!” --William Shawcross
"Janine di Giovanni took ten years out of her life to report on all those terrible wars in the former Yugoslavia. She tells us what it was really like on the frontline -- the squalor, the terror, the barbarity, and the randomness of death. But there was also comradeshiop, hope, glory and, occasionally, the triumph of the human spirit." --Phillipp Knightley, author of The First Casualty: The War Correspondent As Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo
About the Author
Janine di Giovanni is a senior foreign correspondent for The Times of London and a contributing editor for Vanity Fair. She has won Granada Television’s Foreign Correspondent of the Year Award, the National Magazine Award issued by the American Society of Magazine Editors, and two Amnesty International Media Awards for human rights reporting. Author of Against the Stranger: Lives in Occupied Territory and The Quick and the Dead: Under Siege in Sarajevo, she also wrote the introduction to Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s View of Sarajevo. Born in the United States, she received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has lived in London since 1985. She is married to the French journalist Bruno Girodon.
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