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Asne Seierstad (born 1970) has worked as a correspondent in Russia, China, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, amongst many other places. She has received numerous awards for her journalism. She lives in Oslo.
"This book is part travelogue and part social and political document, giving voice to Serbs...a vivid and vital image of life in the country during and after its civil war."
Readers familiar with Seierstad's The Bookseller of Kabul and A Hundred and One Days will discover the same sensitivity and intelligence in her portraits of Serbs that marked her treatment of Afghans and Iraqis in those books. Through repeated interviews and extended personal contact, she depicts 13 individuals and one family before and after the arrest of former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Her approach is successful for several reasons: the apparent confidence she inspired in some subjects, whose loathing of NATO and the West barely exceeded the magnitude of their love for Milosevic; her ability to show how the regime's change after Milosevic's fall profoundly affected persons both ordinary and exceptional; and her skill in describing the utter strangeness of life in Serbia. As Serb rock star Rambo Amadeus (Antonio Pusic) speculates about the wave of suicides after Milosevic's ouster, "People see that Milosevic is gone and their lives are still shit." Matching this pathos is Verica, a Serb refugee from Albanian-dominated Kosovo who struggles to raise her child in Serbia proper, where she is scorned. Then there's Zoran Zivkovic, whose courage in opposing Milosevic is redeemed when he is appointed prime minister in the post-Milosevic era but who loses his first election. This powerful and sympathetic book about people not well understood beyond their homeland deserves a wide audience. For all academic and public libraries.-Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ., Erie Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
"This book is part travelogue and part social and political document, giving voice to Serbs...a vivid and vital image of life in the country during and after its civil war."
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