Besieged
Life Under Fire on a Sarajevo Street
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Granta Books
Published:5th Apr '12
Should be back in stock very soon
Twenty years after the siege of Sarajevo, BBC Samuel Johnson Prize winner Barbara Demick revisits her compelling account of living in a city under fire.
For four centuries, Logavina Street was a quiet residential road in a city known for its ethnic tolerance and cosmopolitan charm. Muslims, Christians, Serbs and Croats lived easily together, sharing an identity as Bosnians. Then the war tore their lives apart. Often without heat, water, food or electricity, they evaded daily sniper fire and witnessed horrific deaths. Neighbours and friends turned into deadly enemies. In this intimate eyewitness account, Barbara Demick weaves together the stories of ten families from Logavina Street, brilliantly illuminating one of the pivotal events of the twentieth century, and describes how, twenty years later, they are coping with the war's consequences. .
By focusing on one Sarajevo street, Demick is able to evoke the reality of life in the city during the war with both more accuracy and more nuance than the other books on the war, including my own -- David Rieff
A vivid and often searing record of the lives of the inhabitants of a single street in a capital city under siege from Serb snipers and artillery fire * New Statesman *
Newly updated, this is an atmospheric description of ordinary life - and death - during the siege of Sarajevo * Sunday Telegraph *
If you can read only one book about Bosnia, this should be the one * Washington Post *
Demick, the author of Nothing to Envy, a great book about North Korea, also spent time in Sarajevo, when the city was besieged. I'd heard a lot about this event, but never quite understood it, until now. Demick brings it to life. A modern European city is cut off from the world. It sits in a gorge; snipers surround it, firing on the citizens. Mortar shells fall out of the sky ... Amazing -- William Leith * Evening Standard *
Demick, the author of Nothing to Envy, a great book about North Korea, also spent time in Sarajevo, when the city was besieged. I'd heard a lot about this event, but never quite understood it, until now. Demick brings it to life. A modern European city is cut off from the world. It sits in a gorge; snipers surround it, firing on the citizens. Mortar shells fall out of the sky ... Amazing * Scotsman *
An intimate eyewitness account of how the people on her Sarajevo streets lived and felt during the Bosnian war. Moving and illuminating. * New Internationalist *
ISBN: 9781847084118
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 17mm
Weight: 221g
272 pages