Yeah, yeah, that's so 90s. But all during the most recent Balkan wars I kept seeing Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon mentioned as one of the definitive works on the area, so I put it on my to-be-read-at-some-point list. I've finally gotten around to it.
It's a journal/travelogue/series of essays about her travels around the country in 1937, and it's fascinating. She seems to have loved the people while recognizing their darker natures. She attributes much of the latter to their history of being invaded and occupied by Turks, Italians, Austrians, and the odd barbarians for roughly 1800 years. I'm only about one-third through, so I haven't even hit the section about the Serbs yet; I'm predisposed not to like them due to Milosevic and his nationalist warmaking. It'll be interesting to see if she can persuade me I'm wrong.
Even though it's 70 years old, it's still topical. I recommend it to anyone interested in the region. For a longer review, try this.
Posted by Linkmeister at February 10, 2007 12:35 PM | TrackBack