Before the war you actually had to ask people’s names to know who they were. Now you can just observe what side of the river they live on. On the east side are the Bosniaks — Muslim citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the west are Croats, Catholic by faith. The two groups split my hometown of Mostar down the […]
Bordered by rivers and the Dinaric range, mountainous Bosnia, which once was an independent kingdom, has always been difficult for outsiders to conquer and control. The Ottoman Empire, which entered the country at the invitation of some rebellious magnates (from which came the saying “Bosnia fell with a whisper” – “šaptom Bosna pade”) ruled that turbulent land for more than […]
The first evidence of an English travel interest in Bosnia-Herzegovina emerged at the end of the 16th century, an interest, however, that was short-term in the extreme and came to a quick end in the first years of the 17th century. For early travellers Bosnia-Herzegovina was just one stage in a much longer journey with Istanbul as the final destination. […]
LIFSCHULTZ: While we are on the subject of multinational states, would you elaborate a little on your argument in The National Question in Yugoslavia that democracy and Yugoslav “unitarism” were incompatible phenomena. In other multinational states such as Pakistan and India, for example, precisely the opposite position has been argued. Thus Pakistan’s disintegration in 1971 has primarily been seen as […]
“Malodušnost” is the Serbo-Croatian word that Henry Cooper uses to describe the subject of Meša Selimović’s novel, Death and the Dervish in his preface to the novel. Faintheartedness and moral cowardice translate the Serbo-Croatian word adequately, but its transliteration—small or diminished soul—adds as well to our understanding of the word’s meaning and the novel’s subject. Ahmed Nuruddin, the novel’s protagonist, […]
How shall we bury the screams deeply in the ground of oblivion So they do not reach us on these arduous paths How shall we place every cherished word and smile in these tight bags How shall we lace these swollen feet with ever tightening hide Behind us let sadness and her companions remain Rather than torches crusading in the dark […]