Through the Embers of Chaos: Balkan Journeys FROM THE PUBLISHER
While bicycling hundreds of miles through beautiful yet tragically depopulated regions of Albania and the former Yugoslavia, Dervla Murphy stayed with families forcibly uprooted, their lives devastated by murder and pillage. Their remarkable conversations revealed the grief and confusions of ordinary people, many of whom were unimaginably brave and resilient during a “decade of decay.”
Dervla Murphy, a fine and accomplished Irish writer, has been recording her travels to the remotest areas of four continents for three decades. Among her many highly praised books are South from Limpopo, Muddling through Madagascar, and Wheels within Wheels.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Murphy, Irish nurse and adventure traveler extraordinaire (she has traveled alone to and written about such dangerous places as Afghanistan and Pakistan), has compiled a fascinating and in-depth look at a region with a long and terrible history. The work is based on her three trips to the Balkans: the first to Zagreb, Croatia, in 1991, soon after Slovenia's and Croatia's secession from Yugoslavia and three months before the Bosnian conflict began; the second, a five-week trip to Serbia in 1999, four months after the end of NATO's air war; and the third, a three-month bicycle tour (at age 69) of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, and Kosovo in 2000. Murphy finely lays out the history of the region and introduces us to its people at the beginning of the "decade of decay," but her second and third trips are the most compelling. Here, she returns to meet the survivors of that chaotic, murderous time in history, who endured widespread executions, pillage, torture, rape, and uprooting as religions, ethnic groups, and national identities clashed. Murphy's style ranges from topnotch reporting to personal and anecdotal storytelling, and her book is a powerful look at a diverse group of people who are both courageous and resilient. With a helpful chronology, plus a map, three appendixes, an extensive bibliography, a much-needed list of acronyms, and an index, this work from a writer of 18 previous adventure travel tomes is both highly educational and deeply inspiring.-Melinda Stivers Leach, Precision Editorial Svcs., Wondervu, CO Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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