Please don’t miss the author of this book HERE where you can view a video by her about the book! Janine di Giovanni is a journalist and she was a war reporter during this war.
“This riveting, enlightening and passionate book tells the story of the descent into madness that afflicted the land that used to be Yugoslavia at the end of the 20th century.”
I was tagged by Kop-op-‘n-blog to do a 123-Story… so here’s mine today!
This tag works like this..you take the nearest book- which has to have at least 123 pages or more…and then you open your book on page 123 and count 6 lines from the top and copy down lines 6, 7 and 8.
I’ve chosen Madness Visible, as it was the fattest book near me! Also, the book brings back memories when you follow the news about the independence of Kosovo! I’m still busy reading this book though! I do love reading books when I have time and like to read books about wars too… WWI/WWII …. the war in Combodia/Kosovo…etc…
On THIS LINK you can read what I said about the Khmer Rouge and books I’ve read about the war in Combodia…. “First they killed my father”… and “Lucky Child”… fantastic writing by Loung Ung!
Here’s my tag….lines 6,7 and 8 on page 123!
“The Americans, who had been unable to control the situation and had been caught in a skirmish along with Russian KFOR troops a few days earlier, were deeply embarrassed.
The front line, a village called Lucane, had the two sides, Albanians and Serbs, separated by sandbagged positions only 100 yards apart.
I have to tag another blogger or two! So, I want the following bloggers to do their 123-Story!
First blogger… Bookstoysgames! a newly discovered blogger whose blog I find very interesting and stimulating, Meghna because I know she loves books and she’s got some great talent when it comes to stories/poetry! and lastly… Jasper a very talented Afrikaans blogger…he’s a great song writer/poet/story writer..but unfortunately for the English readers…he’s blogging only in Afrikaans, which is a wonderful language I love too!!
Overview of the book… ….here on this link.
The Balkan crises of the 1990’s with its “ethnic cleansings,” have become ancient history or worse. In the aftermath of 9/11 the sin of historical amnesia has blotted out the travails of the Bosnians, the Serbs, the Croats, and the Kosovars who killed and died, perhaps 200,000 of them, during the last decade of the twentieth century. In Madness Visible: A Memoir of War, Janine di Giovanni, a journalist for The Times of London and the author of other books on the Balkans, relates in horrific detail her reportorial experiences. Di Giovanni writes mainly of the several weeks in early 1999 when the province of Kosovo was the site of conflict. Mostly Muslim and Albanian speaking, the Kosovars were the victims of the last attempt by Serbian nationalists to maintain control over Kosovo, a place sacred to Serbs ever since the fourteenth century. During those weeks, NATO was engaged in a bombing campaign to force the Serbs and their president, Slobodan Milosevic, to end their decade- long aggression. Di Giovanni admits her sympathies lay with the Kosovars, although she is not unsympathetic to the plight of the Serbs and Croats. From her personal experiences, she also incorporates other vignettes from the early 1990’s to 2002, including reflections upon the fall of Milosevic and his subsequent trial in The Hague. Particularly appalling is the story of Serbian middle-class academics caught up in the passions of ethno-religious nationalism and who readily abandoned their rationalism and their humanity, devoting themselves to the brutal destruction of former colleagues and neighbors. Madness Visible is a difficult book to read because of the detailed portrayal of such inhumanity but it is an important book, a reminder that terror and genocide fueled by religious convictions and historical memories are not restricted to today’s Middle East.
Chessalee 