Impossible Country ANNOTATION
Hall relates his encounters with Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, "real people, likeable people" who are now overcome with suspicions and anxiety about one another. Hall takes the standard explanations and inverts our perceptions of the country. What emerges is a portrait of a country that possibly should never have been, and is in the process of insuring that it will never be again.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
This is a privileged glimpse of the former Yugoslavia from within, one that gets behind journalistic accounts to present the intimate hatreds, prejudices, aspirations, and fears of its citizens. American journalist Brian Hall spent the spring and summer of 1991 traveling through Yugoslavia, even as the nation was crumbling in his footsteps. Having arrived a week after the catalytic May 2 massacre at Borovo Selo, he watched as political solutions were abandoned with dizzying speed, and as Yugoslavia's various ethnicities, which had managed to reach a point of tolerant coexistence, tipped into the violence of civil war. Hall, one of the last foreigners to travel unhindered through the region, has captured the voices of both the prominent and the unknown, from Serbian demagogue Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian leader Alija Izetbegovic to a wide variety of everyday Serbs, Croats, and Muslims: "real people, likeable people," as he says, who have been pushed by rumor and propaganda into carrying out one of the most intense and brutal ethnic conflicts in world history. At the same time, he provides the indispensable historical background, showing how the country called Yugoslavia was cobbled together after World War I, tracing the "ethnic cleansing" practices that have marked the area for centuries, and explaining why every attempt at political compromise has met with such suspicion and resistance. With a sharp eye and flawless ear, Brian Hall has caught a unique moment in history in a book that is superbly researched, beautifully written, funny, fascinating, and poignant.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Hall, a freelance American journalist, was one of the last outsiders permitted to travel freely in Yugoslavia during the final days of its existence. From early May to mid-September 1991 he questioned members of the various Balkan ``tribes'' in Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo and points in between, listening to comments on their history, prejudices, superstitions, fears, aspirations and opinions of other ethnic and national groups. With an unbiased attitude and colorful writing style (``his Ks sounding like chicken bones going down a garbage-disposal unit''), Hall describes the last days of peaceful coexistence among Yugoslavia's religious and ethnic communities and delineates conflicts that would trigger the horrors of ``ethnic cleansing'' and war. In one particularly telling section, he recounts the dynamics of hatred swirling around Apparition Hill in Medjugorje, where religious pilgrims flock to witness the appearance of the Virgin. Hall's account, which he modestly calls a travel book, is an excellent source for understanding the complications and contradictions of the current Balkan crisis. (July)
Library Journal
In this masterly account of the former Yugoslavia's decay and collapse in 1991, American journalist Hall's powerful sense of location and mentality is expressed through a blend of close friendships, high-level interviews, and courageous questions. Hall moves comfortably among Serbs who perceive the nation as a "superpersonality," Croats who remain ambivalent toward their World War II fascist regime, and Muslims like Bosnian president Aliija Izetbegovi'c who claim only the "freedom to define themselves as a people." Religion is omnipresent, and Hall interprets the meaning of the unfinished, cavernous Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava, the intimacy among Muslims at Jajce Mosque in Bosnia, and the wonder of those pursuing the vision of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje. Hall lacks the personal involvement Slavenka Drakuli'c offers in her Balken Express (LJ 4/15/93), and he neglects Slovenia and Macedonia, but his book may be the finest English-language depiction of its kind, if only for his fidelity to his title. Highly recommended for academic and larger public libraries.-Zachery T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ.- Erie
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