Product Description

Brian Hall journeyed through Yugoslavia in the spring and summer of 1991, just as Croatia and Slovenia were seceding and the country was starting to slide into civil war. In this book he describes a country in which the release of communism's iron grip and a wave of rumour and propaganda had reopened older wounds, turning uneasy co-existence between the various national and religious communities into open hostility. His conversations - with farmers, artists, defence fighters, politicians - demonstrate how intelligent, liberal citizens can be persuaded to believe the very worst of another person, merely because that person is a Serb, or a Croat, or a Muslim. The author was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for "Stealing From a Deep Place: Travels in South-Eastern Europe".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #615718 in Books
• Published on: 1996-02-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From the Back Cover
Here is art which conceals art, and intellect which conceals intellect, so that by the end of the book one feels that one understands something one had not understood before. Mr Hall is witty and amusing, but not snide; he has a lightness of touch which allows him to write of extremely serious matters without solemnity; he knows how to convey a great deal in a few words' Sunday Telegraph
'He is an observant and witty writer...you believe implicitly that he has met the people he writes about, and that they said what he quotes them as saying' Sunday Times
'The Impossible Country...is much more than travel literature. Hall may be reporting on the context of the war rather than the events, but he is reporting nonetheless. His rich grasp of history and sense of argument take his writing beyond its genre' Literary Review

Customer Reviews

Why does such a great book keep going out of print?
This is an excellent, original, book, very well written, both witty and informative at the same time. The author manages to be pretty impartial in his treatment of the different nationalities of Yugoslavia and never just perpetuates the myths of each one's national character - something which earlier and later writers have done blatantly. I recognised in my own experiences many of the comments and situations which Brian Hall mentions. He displays a subtlety and level of understanding in his treatment of foreign cultures and history, of which, we are led to believe, Americans are rarely capable. Beats Zoe Bran's (more recent) book hands down on all counts.

Extract from �Books on Bosnia�, London 1999
A well-written and intelligent travelogue (with some passages of historical and political background), describing a journey in the summer of 1991. Hall mastered Serbo-Croat well enough to catch the nuances of what people say; his pages are filled with conversations with ordinary people, who reveal their prejudices, fears and hopes