Product Description

Winner, Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2002, Non-Fiction

"In badly constructed books, the reader doesn't care what happens on the next page. In well-constructed books, the reader can't wait to see what happens on the next page. This book is a rare, third kind: The reader dreads what will happen on the next page. Nevertheless, he feels compelled to read on. . . . McAllester takes the reader not only along the streets where atrocities have been committed but inside homes while they are happening. As is the case with many good reads, the power of such scenes comes from the order in which events are presented. First the author develops a character, then later in the book informs you about his fate. Or the author will describe how a family is brutalized, then describes, almost as an aside — in the course of a succeeding chapter about his own adventures in war-torn Kosovo — how he meets a traumatized eyewitness to the previous account. In this way, the reader becomes an observer not only of what was happening inside Kosovo during the NATO bombardment but of what was happening to McAllester himself and how he managed to assemble his book."
—Washington Post

"The power of McAllester's extraordinary book lies not in its comprehensiveness or its literary polish-though there are many brilliantly moving and perceptive passages-but in its shocking authenticity and deep moral concern. One gets the sense that he risked his life not simply to pursue a story, timely and important as it was, but because of the enormity of the evil being done and his conviction that, in a world of bland policy abstractions, what happened in those days inside Kosovo had to be told."
—New Leader

"McAllester powerfully concludes that a sickening mixture of greed, ethnic hostility, and wartime nihilism has displaced the healing power for love and reconciliation for the forseeable future. One of the most thoughtful accounts of the conflict in Kosovo to date conveyed with taut journalistic clarity that should ensure the book a broad range of readers."
—Kirkus, Starred Review

"This account is not of the ‘virtual war’ that Westerners saw on their television screens but of the real effects on people who consider the ravaged area home."
—Library Journal, Starred Review

"McAllester's spare, understated prose is potent as is his exploration of the human side of geopolitics and war."
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"In a twist that took McAllester as much by surprise as it will the reader, it appears that Isa Bala lived in that ill-defined world too, a world where people make deals and concessions just to survive another day. Perhaps he believed that through such compromises, his family would be safe. if so, he was tragically wrong."
—Sunday Telegraph (London)

"Beyond the Mountains of the Damned is a gripping, if depressing, account of what McAllester found among the ruins. . . . There is no bravado. . . . He offers vivid thumbnail sketches of Kosovar warriors in the field."
— Newsday

"McAllester offers us the kind of specific detail that we need to make other people's lives human to us. Even more importantly, he tells us how it is to be the oppressor, or at least one of the minions of the oppressors"
—American Book Review

For every survivor of a crime, there is a criminal who forces his way into the victim's thoughts long after the act has been committed.

Reporters weren't allowed into Kosovo during the war without the permission of the Yugoslavian government but Matthew McAllester went anyway. In Beyond the Mountains of the Damned he tells the story of Pec, Kosovo's most destroyed city and the site of the earliest and worst atrocities of the war, through the lives of two menone Serb and one Kosovar. They had known each other, and been neighbors for years before one visited tragedy on the other. With a journalist's eye for detail McAllester asks the great question of war: What kind of men could devastate an entire city, killing whole families, and feel no sense of guilt? The answer lies in the culture of gangsterism and ethnic hatred that began with the collapse of Yugoslavia.

In March of 1999, the world watched thousands of Albanian refugees pour out of Kosovo, carrying stories of the terror that drove them from their homes. To Isa Bala and his family, Albanian Muslims who stayed in Pec during the NATO bombardment, the war in Kosovo was not about cruise missiles and geopolitics. It was about tiptoeing between survival and death in the town that saw the fiercest destruction, the most thorough eviction of the Albanian population and killings whose brutality demands explanation. To Nebojsa Minic and other Serb militiamen who ruled with murder, the conflict was about the exercise of power. Today they are alive and well in the new Yugoslavia. So unconcerned are they over the prospect of ever being held accountable for their crimes that they were willing to sit down over coffee after the war and discuss in detail their brief, brutal reign.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1235264 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-12
• Released on: 2001-12-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Publishers Weekly
"The only defense is in offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves." This quote, occurring toward the end of this horrifying and deeply moving account of Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, comes not from Slobodon Milosevic but from Stanley Baldwin, later a British prime minister, in a 1932 speech and serves as a historical frame for the action covered here. While most Americans saw the air strikes on television, McAllester claims that "the unseen war, the war inside Kosovo, has remained largely untold." Defying the Yugoslavian government's ban on unescorted foreign reporters, McAllester, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the TWA flight 800, went in 2001 to Pec, Kosovo's most ravaged city during the 78 days of NATO bombing. McAllester carefully charts the larger historical and political framework: the history of Pec, the longstanding animosity between the ethnic Albanians and the Serbs, the complicated position of regular Serb soldiers caught between the KLA attacks and NATO bombing. But the main focus is on Isa Bala, an ethnic Albanian sausage maker and his family, and in particular their persecution by their Serb gangster neighbor, Nebojsa Minic, and on a persistent family feud. McAllester is a careful observer and as the story moves from the ordinary (everyday life; Isa selling Minic sausages; Isa wishing he had married earlier so that he could have more children) to the horrifying rape of his wife and brutal murder of most of his children, the story becomes nearly unbearable in its inevitability. McAllester's spare, understated prose ("The skull seemed to be the size of a child's," he notes, coming upon a local killing ground) is potent, as is his exploration of the human side of geopolitics and war. (Feb.)Forecast: As the "small" wars of the '90s involving Muslims come to seem more and more related (see review of A Dirty War, p. 58), journalistic books such as this will be sought out by readers trying to make sense of recent history. McAllester's excellent, heartbreaking work here is more relevant than ever.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
NATO's 1999 bombardment of Kosovo was intended to end ethnic cleansing in the province and is known in the West through the streams of refugees who fled across the border, telling horrific tales of the brutality they left behind. This account, in contrast, is about several families who remained in the Kosovar city of Pec and tried to survive. A Newsday correspondent and winner of a shared Pulitzer, McAllester crossed into Kosovo without official sanction or papers. He tells the story through two men, an Albanian Kosovar butcher and his extended family, and a Serb who had joined a paramilitary unit. The depth of hatred that each group expresses toward the other explains a lot of the revenge violence during the conflict and offers no hope of lasting peace anytime soon. None of the individuals introduced here emerges with completely clean hands, and none has been indicted for war crimes. This account is not of the "virtual war" that Westerners saw on their television screens but of the real effects on people who consider the ravaged area home. Informed readers will appreciate the perspective. Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"One of the most thoughful accounts of the conflict in Kosovo to date, conveyed with taut, journalistic clarity." -- Kirkus, starred review, November 15, 2001

"Potent . . . exploration of the human side of geopolitics and war. . . . McAllester’s excellent, heartbreaking work here is more relevant than ever.” -- Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review):

Winner, Best Book of 2002, Non-Fiction -- Publishers Weekly

[McAllester] displays the natural gifts of the storyteller...to develop characters, build tension, and keep a plot churning. -- Robert D. Kaplan, Washington Post 2/02

“Brings the Kosovo ground war into searing focus. . . . Extraordinary” -- The New Leader, January/February, 2002:

“This account is not of the ‘virtual war’ that Westerners saw on their television[s]. . . Informed readers will appreciate the perspective.” -- Library Journal (Starred Review):

Customer Reviews

A good journalistic account
McAllester has told the story of the war in Kosovo from his own perspective, as a journalist moving around the province without official sanction, and from the perspective of several Kosovars living in the city of Pec, like most of Kosovo a formerly Serbian city which is now primarily Albanian.

This story is effective. The violent finale is one the reader will see coming, but it remains shocking and powerful - these are real people and not fictional characters. McAllester has done a good job in describing the nightmare for ordinary people trying to live through war and ethnic cleansing. His account of his own experiences is less gripping, but reasonably interesting.

What he hasn't done is give a broader perspective. This book will tell you little about the Kosovo war, it's historical background, the breakup of Yugoslavia, or the war's outcome and significance. For those who are looking for a broader history of these events, this book is entirely inadequate.

Reporter who forgot he's not the story
If you know anything about the region and recent events, this book will not enlighten you further. If you don't know anything about what went on in Kosovo, but would like to, "A Village Destroyed," by Fred Abrahms is a much better source. If you want to know what it's like to be a green newspaper reporter covering his first war this might be of some interest.

chilling, gripping
I followed the war in Kosovo by reading about it in the newspapers. Then, like the bulk of Americans, pretty much forgot about it once it was over. But thanks to McAllester's exquisite, journalistic eye for detail, I feel as if I was actually there, a witness somehow to the atrocities that took place.
I have never had a particular interest in, or understanding of, the Balkans. Now after reading Beyong the Mountains of the Damned I hunger to know as much as possible.
This is no ordinary historical account. It is compelling and it stays with you after you are done. It reads with the breeze of fiction. What is petrifying, however, is that the characters are real and so are their stories. Chapter 12, The Killing, may be the most powerful chapter I've ever read in any book of this kind. While reading alone, I gasped and cried out loud.
I highly recommend this book to anyone with a particular interest in Kosovo and Serbia. But it is not only for those with a specialized interest in the region. It is for anyone who appreciates good writing and courageous reporting.