The most recommended books about the Balkans

In the summer of 1996, Ms. Brkic joined a Physicians for Human Rights forensic team in Eastern Bosnia to excavate the mass graves of the Srebrenica massacre. Ms. Brkic, who grew up in Northern Virginia, had family connections in the Balkans. Her grandmother, Andelka, was from Herzegovina, in a small village among limestone hills. The family survived the Second World War and the Communist takeover of their country. Her father escaped from Yugoslavia in 1959 and settled in America. 

Stone Fields juxtaposes the family story with the story of the summer Ms. Brkic spent on the forensic team in Tuzla and with her friends and relatives in Zagreb. The author portrays the many ways that people can lose their homes—through war, genocide, political oppression, emigration, family discord—with heartbreaking clarity, always aware of the dignity, as well as the tragedy, of the survivors’ lives.

This is a gorgeous, poetic, magical book, with a strong female character with a mission that is not about falling in love and having children. Although there are love stories in the book, they are unusual ones (as shown by the title) and that is not the main narrative arc of the central protagonist. I long for books where women do something other than fall in love, have children, or emulate men.

I remember the Balkan wars in the early 1990s, as I followed television and newspaper reports on events like the siege of Sarajevo.

But although some things were already quite clear at the time (the massacre at Srebrenica was a war crime and a human tragedy), I never had more than a vague idea of who were the ‘good guys’ and who were the ‘bad guys’, much less any understanding of the root causes of the wars.

This book provides an exceptional first-hand account of the various dreams, motivations, manipulations, and arrogance that lead to the implosion of Yugoslavia after Tito died, and all of the bloodshed that ensued.         

Another parable, another legend, another work of manual labour turned mystical. In this tale of a bridge-building gone wrong, Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare considers the harms and inevitabilities that come from spanning disparate cultures. This book features a human sacrifice at the altar of erection; it feels antique and yet timeless; it explores the boundaries of human endeavor. Notes the narrator, a silenced sceptic, “all great building works resemble crimes.” It is a recognisable concern from Kadare, an exile of Hoxha’s totalitarian regime.

This is a Nobel Prize for Literature-winning book that is a must-read for historical fiction enthusiasts.

Spanning some four hundred years, the centerpiece isn’t the usual high drama running across generations of a family but rather a bridge, the bridge over the river Drina.

The book is a surprisingly easy-to-read novel that follows periods in the lives of the peasants in a Bosnian town whose lives were marked by the bridge.

Through the telling of these stories, Andric subtly introduces the reader to the empires, religions, and cultures of the Balkans. 

Go to any park or public square in any city in the world and you are likely to see statues of people so venerated because they fought/died in some war. Why do we mythologize war, our species’ most destructive collective behavior?

In this 2002 book, written in the second years of the Global War on Terror, American journalist Chris Hedges gives a chilling explanation that, for me, dovetailed perfectly with my readings of Becker and TMT: “Most of us willingly accept war as long as we can fold it into a belief system that paints the ensuing suffering as necessary for a higher good, for human beings seek not only happiness but also meaning. And tragically war is sometimes the most powerful way in society to achieve meaning.”

This book was written by one of the most interesting figures in the history of communist Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas. He had been a high-level official and a close collaborator of Josip Broz Tito, the leader of Yugoslav partisans (who would become marshal and president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), before he became best known Yugoslav dissident. 

In this book Đilas gives a first-hand testimony of his meetings with Joseph Stalin, as a member of Yugoslav delegations sent to Moscow. Beautifully written, the book provides a rich insight into the political situation in the Balkans and in Stalin’s Soviet Union during some of the most turbulent times of modern European history. In a unique way, Đilas manages to combine personal accounts with critical perspectives on ideologies and political events that were in many ways decisive for Yugoslavia in the period to come.

This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. It’s about a neurotic, hypochondriacal, middle-aged college professor in a small town who does one absurd thing after another as he attempts to sort his life out. 

His wife, daughter, and father are all as much of a wreck as he is, as are his lunatic colleagues in the English department. Being a middle-aged, neurotic, and hypochondriacal man myself—and having grown up in a small, claustrophobic college town with maladjusted academic types much like these—this novel had me crying with laughter. (There’s an over-the-top scene with a goose and a news reporter that almost made me wet myself.) 

But as often happens in a Richard Russo novel, there are also tons of lovely, sweet, and insightful moments. This is a great book.

One of the most popular explanations for the outbreak of war between 1918 and 1939 was that it had been caused by the ‘Merchants of Death,’ i.e. the large armaments firms and their financiers who profited from international animosity. Although the conspiracy theory tendency in this belief gradually dissipated, the idea that the arms race was a significant contributory factor leading to war has long featured on any list of ‘causes’.

David Stevenson’s exhaustive research in the archives of most of the combatant states has provided us with massive and fascinating detail on the thinking of those involved and the relationship between geopolitical ambitions, strategic calculations, and financial realities. His treatment makes for fascinating reading, enhanced by crisply argued interpretations of the role of military and naval preparedness in the crises that plagued prewar Europe.

This book is rich in detail and tells the story of Maddie who is a travel writer who meets her future husband, Ian, while abroad. From the beginning during a 911 call, it’s obvious that something has gone badly wrong. This is a wonderfully written book, set in the Balkans, Iraq, and Kansas, to name a few places, and is full of tension. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.