Product Description

Through the testimonies of Bosnian refugees who survived ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina, this title demonstrates how ethnic cleansing has worked its way into people's lives and memories. Stevan M. Weine is a psychiatrist who has spent the past decade working with Bosnian survivors of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. As he listened to their testimonies, Weine concluded that these narratives were capable of bearing a complex truth about the horrific events in Yugoslavia that often were lost in more analytic works on the subject. Weine investigates the survivors' attempts to reconcile the contrasting, collective memories of having lived in a smoothly functioning, multi-ethnic society with the later memories of the ethnic atrocities. Personal portraits of leaders such as Jovan Raskovic and Radovan Karadzic are also included. Weine concludes by describing the recovery effort of survivors - how they work to confront the destructive nature of their memories while trying to bring about healing, both individually and collectively.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1110123 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 278 pages

From Library Journal
The title suggests that this is a journalistic account of the Bosnian war, but it is not. Weine, codirector of the Project on Genocide, Psychiatry, and Witnessing at the University of Illinois in Chicago, seeks to elucidate the complicated conflict by emphasizing the psychology of everyone involvedAincluding those responsible for making ethnic cleansing part of our vocabulary. Weine sums up his argument precisely when he quotes from UlyssesA"History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake"Asaying that the core problem lies in the inability of the Balkan peoples to deal with history in the right way. Weine's attempt is admirable and sincere, but as an outsider he fails to see how intricate the conflict really is; it is severely stereotypical to assert that the post-World War II years were essentially about suppressing bitterness and hatreds. In addition, he neglects the crucial question of why so many were unable and unwilling to distinguish between their nationality and religion. Nevertheless, chapters on the leaders of the recent genocide in Bosnia are particularly interesting, and those with little knowledge of the conflict will find this accessible introductory work helpful.AMirela Roncevic, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"A profoundly human book, with a keen ear for the story, and an open heart to convey its depth. Stevan Weine attempts to weave history, human rights, psychology, anthropology, and creative arts into a new perspective on what genocide does to the lives of its survivors and to their culture." -- Yael Danieli, editor, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Fifty Years and Beyond

"A remarkable book. Everybody ought to read this panoramic view of the tragedy of Bosnia." -- Ervin Staub, author, The Roots of Evil

"Through his skillful empathic listening and eloquent writing, Stevan Weine conveys the magnitude of the horrors, the dreadful consequences of man's inhumanity to man." -- Jerrold M. Post, M.D. co-author, Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred

"Weine's history, based on survivors' testimonies, produces a story with human faces that is more capable of helping us to fulfill promises that so many Holocaust claims of 'Never again!' Bosnians will be grateful for this book." -- Tvrtko Kulenovic, University of Sarajevo, and former president of P.E.N Bosnia-Herzogovina

From the Publisher
In When History is a Nightmare, Weine offers a deeply human exploration of that nightmare of history, with new ways of understanding and intervening with respect to memories, that can inform the work that will be done in Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia and the Balkans for years to come.

Customer Reviews

a powerful, impressionistic account of the Balkan horrors
Weine's book is by no means narrow in its subject-matter. He touches on: inter-ethnic marriage, criticisms of the United Nations, memory as a ground for social morality, the challenges of refugees in America, the construction of psychoses, the social deification of doctors, urbanism, the identity of Europe and the Balkans, the impact of communist cultural censorship, fundamentalism, the social responsibilities of psychiatrists, the need for a permanent UN war crimes court, and discontinuities in the lifepaths of trauma survivors. Any one of these issues could have been the topic for his relatively short 230 page book. But together, they paint a picture of the multifaceted chaos that is ethnic conflict. We get the sense that nothing here is simple, that everything is interconnected, and that the ethnic cleansing is not a psychiatric, geographic, military, or political issue, but fundamentally a human problem of persons.

So if you are looking for a deep and careful study of the psychological issues that afflict ethnic cleansing survivors, then I suppose that this book is not your source. If you want, on the other hand, a compelling and touching tour through a recent crisis of human history and a casual chat with a knowledgeable, connected, and compassionate person,then Stevan Weine's book is the perfect choice...END