Impossible Country

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".

Brian Hall was born in 1959. He grew up in Massachusetts and attended Harvard College. After two years spent travelling in Western and Eastern Europe, he wrote Stealing from a Deep Place- Travels in South-Eastern Europe, and a novel set in Vienna, The Dreamers. From 1989 through 1991 he made several trips to Yugoslavia, in preparation for writing The Impossible Country. He currently lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife and daughter.