Shadowplay
I bought Tim Marshall’s account of the Yugoslavia war in the 90’s, Shadowplay , because I don’t understand anything about the place. Or as Marshall put it: “I thought I knew my history, but actually coming to a region where everyone seemed to have a grievance and an ‘itch’ at the end of their name was confusing. Milošević. Panić, Ilić?” In case you’re wondering, this is not a popular history book. Instead, it’s a British journalist’s account of his stint in Yugoslavia during that period. With typical British wry humour, he pointed out Europe’s surprise by the carnage that broke out after the death of Marshall Tito who had convinced folks that “they really were Yugoslav first, Croat/ Bosnian/ Muslim/ Serb second”. But after his death and the fall of communism, things old divisions resurfaced: “To my generation it just didn’t seem possible. War was what happened far away, in places with different cultures. War did not happen in our continent because we’d left all that be...