Table of Contents

Introduction: Not a Fairy Tale
1. Why The Hague
2. Justice Is Boring
3. A Suicide Scenario
4. A Quiet Night in October
5. Boys Just Had Fun
6. He Would Never Hurt a Fly
7. "Triumph of Evil"
8. One Day in the Life of Drazen Erdemovic
9. A Beast in a Cage
10. Ribbons and Bows
11. Punished by the Gods
12. The Metamorphosis of Biljana Plavsic
13. Why We Need Monsters
Epilogue: Brotherhood and Unity

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Slavenka Drakulic was born in Croatia in 1949. The author of several works of nonfiction and novels, she has written for The New York Times, The Nation, The New Republic, and numerous publications around the world.

Reviews

With the craft of a major journalist, Drakulic? distills the proceedings into economical, evocative narratives ("Elle")

With the craft of a major journalist, DrakulicA distills the proceedings into economical, evocative narratives ("Elle")

With the craft of a major journalist, Drakulic distills the proceedings into economical, evocative narratives ("Elle")

With the craft of a major journalist, Drakulic4 distills the proceedings into economical, evocative narratives ("Elle")

What causes people to participate in genocide? Respected Croatian journalist Drakulic (How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed) set out to explore the psyches of the people who turned her former country, Yugoslavia, into a killing field in the early 1990s. Observing them on trial for war crimes before the International Tribunal in the Hague, Drakulic depicts the perpetrators, from Radomir Kovac, who raped young girls, to the delusional former Serb president Slobodan Milosevic, often from the point of view of the perpetrators themselves. The novelistic imputation of imagined thoughts can be distracting. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, the snapshots are powerful and horrifying: they include a chilling description of the slaughter at Srebrenica through the eyes of a reluctant Bosnian soldier forced to kill or be killed, and a portrayal of an entire town's complicity in the murder of a Croatian militiaman after he courageously testified before the tribunal. Drakulic's analysis of why people choose evil-fear, opportunism, propaganda, lust for power and identity, historical grievances-offers little that's new, and her conclusion-"if ordinary people committed war crimes, it means that any of us begs the question of why some found the courage to say no. But her focus on the perpetrators and their apparently inexplicable moral choices forces us to face the questions of good and evil these crimes raise. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

With the craft of a major journalist, Drakulic? distills the proceedings into economical, evocative narratives ("Elle")
With the craft of a major journalist, DrakulicA distills the proceedings into economical, evocative narratives ("Elle")
With the craft of a major journalist, Drakulic distills the proceedings into economical, evocative narratives ("Elle")
With the craft of a major journalist, Drakulic4 distills the proceedings into economical, evocative narratives ("Elle")