The sources below concern the history of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the war and genocide, and its aftermath. These are available through the the Free Library of Philadelphia System, which is a nod to the Bosnian community in the United States and meant to represent a larger survey of sources that are theoretically available in major library systems nationwide.  On a separate page are sources  available in the Cumberland County Library System, as the oral history project is about and for the Bosnian community in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

The lists for Cumberland County and Philadelphia are each broken down by type of source and, if applicable, by topic. Each source type begins with those written for children and young adults, as educating the next generation is an integral part of the preservation of memory. Scholars are the next priority, and the organization of the sources reflects this goal: primary and nonfiction sources come before secondary and fiction sources. These are not recommendations, but rather samples of what might be available to you.

For wider accessibility, most of these sources can also be found on Amazon, through WorldCat, or your local bookstore or library. Books are often also in large print, audiobook, or eBook editions. To account for the availability of different editions, chapter page ranges are omitted. This list is not exhaustive, and we are always looking for suggestions!

* = Cumberland County and Philadelphia availability

Memoirs – Bosnians/Bosniaks

*Amra Sabic-El-Rayess and Laura L. Sullivan, The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, War, And Survival (New York: Bloombury Children’s Books, 2020).

Maurice Sendak, I Dream of Peace: Images of War by Children of Former Yugoslavia (New York: UNICEF, 1994).

  • Book of drawings by children in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia from schools and refugee camps – not a memoir, but more personal than a nonfiction book

*Zlata Filipović, Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo (New York: Viking, 1994).

Nadja Halilbegovich, My Childhood Under Fire: A Sarajevo Diary (Toronto: Kids Can Press, 2006).

*Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).

*Julia Lieblich and Esad Boskailo, Wounded I Am More Awake: Finding Meaning after Terror (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012).

Atka Reid and Hana Schofield, Goodbye Sarajevo: A True Story of Courage, Love and Survival (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011).

*Kenan Trebinčević, The Bosnia List: A Memoir of War, Exile, and Return (New York: Penguin Books, 2014).

 

Memoirs – Western journalists, diplomats, scientists, soldiers, and humanitarians

Kathryn Bolkovac with Cari Lynn, The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman’s Fight for Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

  • Source material for The Whistleblower movie

Courtney Angela Brkic, The Stone Fields: An Epitaph for the Living (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004).

  • Forensic scientist contracted by the UN to establish a morgue near Srebrenica after genocide

*Eric Greitens, “Bosnia,” in The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, The Making of a Navy SEAL (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011).

Bob Harris, “Welcome to Sarajevo,” in The International Bank of Bob: Connecting Our Worlds One $25 Kiva Loan at Time (New York: Walker & Co., 2013).

  • Bob Harris started kiva.org to lend microloans to nations around the world and went to the places where his loans were being distributed

James Hatch with Christian D’Andrea, Touching the Dragon: And Other Techniques for Surviving Life’s Wars (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018).

  • Hatch was a Navy SEAL in Bosnia in 1996 after the war

Shannon Huffman Polson, The Grit Factor: Courage, Resilience, & Leadership in the Most Male-dominated Organization in the World (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020).

  • Flew helicopters for the NATO-led Stabilization Force to support the Dayton Accords

*Clea Koff, The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist’s Search for Truth in The Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, And Kosovo (New York: Random House, 2004).

Lloyd, Anthony, My War Gone By, I Miss It So (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999).

  • British reporter in Bosnia during the war and his subsequent Post Traumatic Stress

Elissa Montanti and Jennifer Haupt, I’ll Stand by You: One Woman’s Mission to Heal the Children of the World (New York: Penguin Books, 2013).

  • First 1/3 of the book is about Bosnia

Samantha Power, The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir (Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2019).

  • Samantha Power was a war correspondent (in Bosnia during the war) and youngest ambassador to the UN

Joseph C. Wilson, “U.S. Peacekeeping in Bosnia,” in The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity, A Diplomat’s Memoir (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2004).

 

Oral History – The HistoryMakers (African American Video Oral History Repository)

Jerry Revish, interviewed by The HistoryMakers, 3 April 2012, Chicago, Illinois: The HistoryMakers, 2016, oral history interview. https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/jerry-revish-1

  • Local news reporter from Ohio, in Bosnia during the war

Colonel Christine Knighton, interviewed by The HistoryMakers, 26 July 2013, Chicago, Illinois: The HistoryMakers, 2016, oral history interview. https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/col-christine-knighton

  • “In 1980, she became the second African American woman in the U.S. Department of Defense and the first woman from the State of Georgia to complete aviation training courses. On November 3, 1996, Colonel Knighton became the first woman in the U.S. Army to command a tactical combat arms battalion when she was assigned as commander of a Blackhawk Helicopter Battalion in the 1st Cavalry Division and deployed to Tulza, Bosnia-Herzegovina to conduct aviation operations.”

William Ward, interviewed by The HistoryMakers, 25 June 2013, Chicago, Illinois: The HistoryMakers, 2016, oral history interview. https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/gen-william-ward

  • “Ward commanded at every level from Lieutenant through General. His military command and staff assignments included serving as a Commander during Operation Restore Hope in Mogadishu, Somalia and Operation Joint Forge in Sarajevo, Bosnia among others, and as U.S. Security Coordinator Israel and Palestinian Authority.”

 

Nonfiction – History of Bosnia

Francine Friedman, The Bosnian Muslim: Denial of a Nation (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996).

Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War (New York: Penguin, 1992).

Ivan Lovrenović, Bosnia: A Cultural History (New York: New York University Press, 2001).

*Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (New York: New York University Press, 1996).

Mark Pinson, The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina: Their Historic Development from the Middle Ages to the Dissolution of Yugoslavia (Cambridge, MA: Distributed for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University by Harvard University Press, 1993).

 

Nonfiction – War in Bosnia

Tone Bringa, Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995).

  • Ethnography about a Bosnian Muslim rural village outside Sarajevo from late 1980s to the village’s destruction/desertion by 1993

Norman L. Cigar, Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of “Ethnic Cleansing” (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995).

Roger Cohen, Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo (New York: Random House, 1998).

  • Cohen was a New York Times reporter in Bosnia during the war

Barbara Demick, Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2012).

  • Demick was a reporter in Sarajevo during the war and she interviewed residents of Logavina Street, a microcosm for the war in Bosnia

Ethnic Conflict in the Post-Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis, edited by Leokadia Drobizheva, Rose Gottemoeller, Catherine McArdle Kelleher, Lee Walker (Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1998).

Tom Gjelten, Sarajevo Daily: A City and its Newspaper under Siege (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1995).

  • Book about Oslobodjenje, one of Sarajevo’s daily newspapers through the war with Bosnian, Croat, and Serb staff working underground to survive and report n life in Sarajevo during the siege
  • Gjelten was a reporter in Sarajevo and with Oslobodjenje during the war
  • Probably part memoir, part nonfiction

Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both, Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime (New York: Penguin Books, 1997).

Ethnic Conflict, edited by Maya Immell (San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 2000).

*Peter Maass, Love Thy Neighbor (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996).

*David Rohde, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica: Europe’s Worst Massacre Since World War II (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997).

Charles R. Shrader, The Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central Bosnia: A Military History, 1992-1994 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003).

Sheila Weller, “From Atlanta to Bosnia: A Crusader is Born: Christiane: 1983-1999,” in The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour– and the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV News (New York: Penguin Press, 2014), 212-254.

  • Amanpour was in Bosnia reporting on the Siege of Sarajevo for CNN

 

Nonfiction – International Diplomacy and Military Intervention

Martin Bell, War and Peacekeeping: Personal Reflections on Conflict and Lasting Peace (New York: Oneworld Publications, 2020).

  • British UNICEF ambassador, reporter, and diplomat
  • BBC reporter in Sarajevo, injured by shrapnel

*Steven L. Burg & Paul S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1999).

This Time We Knew: Western Responses to Genocide in Bosnia, edited by Thomas Cushman Stjepan Gabriel Meštrović (New York: New York University Press, 1996).

*David Rieff, Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995).

Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2007).

  • General Sir Rupert Smith was a British general who fought for the British Army for 40 years and commanded UNPROFOR in Bosnia (specifically Srebrenica during the massacre)

 

Nonfiction – U.S. Diplomacy and Military Intervention

Wayne Bert, The Reluctant Superpower: United States’ Policy in Bosnia, 1991-95 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

The Use of Force After the Cold War, edited by H.W. Brands (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2000).

Andrew Carroll, “The Vietnam War, The Persian Gulf War, Somalia, and Bosnia,” War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars (New York: Scribner, 2001).

Derek H. Chollet, The Road to the Dayton Accords: A Study of American Statecraft (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

James Dobbins, John G. McGinn, Keith Crane, Seth G. Jones, Rollie Lal, Andrew Rathmell, Rachel Swanger, and Anga Timisina, “Bosnia,” in America’s Role in Nation-Building from Germany to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003).

Douglas C. Foyle, “Public Opinion and Bosnia: Anticipating Disaster,” in Contemporary Cases in U.S. Foreign Policy: From Terrorism to Trade, edited by Ralph G. Carter (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2002).

  • Textbook for US foreign policy classes
  • Multiple editions published since 2002, newer editions do not have pieces on Bosnia

Peter A. Huchthausen, America’s Splendid Little Wars: A Short History of U.S. Military Engagements: 1975-1999 (New York : Viking, 2003).

Robert D. Kaplan, “Bosnia, 1995-1996,” in The Good American: The Epic Life of Bob Gersony, the U.S. Government’s Greatest Humanitarian (New York: Random House, 2021).

  • Biography of Bob Gersony, a lifelong US diplomat and contractor, and humanitarian – heavily involved in the worst human catastrophes and genocides of the Cold War and post-Cold War eras
  • Gersony interviewed refugees and aid workers about implementation of Dayton Accords

*George Packer, “Bosnia,” in Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019).

Vicki J. Rast, “Interagency Paralysis: Armed Intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo,” in Mismanaging Mayhem: How Washington Responds to Crisis, edited by James Jay Carafano and Richard Weitz (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008).

Warren P. Strobel, Late-breaking Foreign Policy: The News Media’s Influence on Peace Operations (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997).

  • About the“CNN effect,” the effects of the 24-hour news cycle on Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti, and Northern Iraq

John W. Western, “Famine in Somalia and Ancient Hatreds in Bosnia,” Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).

 

Nonfiction – Islam and Bosnia

Islam: A Challenge for Christianity, edited by Hans Küng and Jürgen Moltman (Maryknoll, N.Y: SCM Press, 1994).

  • SCM press, academic theology (Christian)
  • Chapter on Bosnia, preview unavailable

Michael Anthony Sells, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

Michael A. Sells, “Sacral Ruins in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Mapping Ethnoreligious Nationalism,” in Religion and the Creation of Race and Ethnicity: An Introduction, edited by Craig R. Prentiss (New York: New York University, 2003).

Miroslav Volf, “Europe: Bosnia,” in Religion as a Source of Violence, edited by Wim Beuken and Karl-Josef Kuschel (Maryknoll, NY: SCM Press, 1997).

  • SCM Press for academic theology

 

Nonfiction – Women

*Christina Lamb, “The Roses of Sarajevo,” in Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: War Through the Lives of Women (New York: Scribner, 2020).

Mass Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, ed. Alexandra Stiglmeyer, trans. by Marion Faber (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).

  • Interviews with Bosnian, Serb, and Croat survivors and Serbian perpetrators

 

Nonfiction – Forensics

Christian Jennings, Bosnia’s Million Bones: Solving the World’s Greatest Forensic Puzzle (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

Henry C. Lee and Jerry Labriola, Shocking Cases from Dr. Henry Lee’s Forensic Files (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010).

  • Chapter on Bosnia and Croatia, probably Srebrenica

 

Nonfiction – Genocide and Bosnia

Genocide, edited by William Dudley, Scott M. Barbour, and Brenda Stalcup (San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 2001).

Neil Jeffrey Kressel, “Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia,” in Mass Hate: The Global Rise of Genocide and Terror (New York: Plenum Press, 1996).

Ray Spangenburg, The Crime of Genocide: Terror against Humanity (Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 2000).

Genocide at the Millenium, edited by Samuel Totten (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2005).

Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, edited by Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charney (New York: Routledge, 2004).

Bruce W. Wilshire, Get ‘Em All! Kill ‘Em!: Genocide, Terrorism, Righteous Communities (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005).

 

Nonfiction – ICTY

Judith Armatta, Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milosevic (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).

  • Armatta was a journalist who covered the trial for the Coalition for International Justice

Elizabeth Neuffer, The Key to My Neighbor’s House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda (New York: Picador, 2001).

Lawrence Weschler, Vermeer in Bosnia: A Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004).

  • Only title essay is about Bosnia and the ICTY

 

Nonfiction – Postwar Bosnia

David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton (Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2000).

Joe Sacco, War’s End: Profiles from Bosnia, 1995-1996 (Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2005).

  • Graphic novel about Sarajevo, “Soba” and “Christmas with Karadzic” short stories
  • Mix of memoir and non-fiction

Wojciech Tochman, Like Eating a Stone: Surviving the Past in Bosnia (New York: Atlas & Co. Publishers., 2008).

  • Firsthand accounts of people in Bosnia after the war trying to heal, find the missing, and commemorate the war
  • Originally published in Polish in 2002

 

Nonfiction – Miscellaneous

Mark Chmiel, “The Worthy Victim: Moral Authority and State Power,” in Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001).

  • Elie Weisel’s involvement in activism about the war in Bosnia, among other things vs. Weisel’s stance on bystanders in the Holocaust

Janice T. Connell, The Visions of the Children: The Apparitions of the Blessed Mother at Medjugorje, rev. ed (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007).

  • About the Bosnian city Medjugorje – where the Virgin Mary appeared in the late 1980s – site of catholic pilgrimage
  • Originally published 1992 and newer editions in context of war

*Michael Ignatieff, The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017).

*Robert D. Kaplan, “From Bosnia to Baghdad,” in The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle against Fate (New York: Random House, 2012).

Adam LeBor, Milosevic: A Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).

  • Before Milosevic’s death, after imprisonment for trials

 

Reference

David C. King, Bosnia and Herzegovina (New York: Benchmark Books, 2005).

JoAnn Milivojevic, Bosnia and Herzegovina (New York: Children’s Press, 2004).

Timothy L. Gall, Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations (Detroit, MI: UXL, 2004).

Timothy L. Gall and Susan B. Gall, Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Cultures (Detroit, MI: UXL, 1999).

 Karl Baedeker, Austria; Including Hungary, Transylvania, Dalmatia, and Bosnia; Handbook for Travellers (Leipsic, Germany: Karl Baedeker, publisher, 1896, 1900, 1905, 1911).

Mark Baker, Eastern Europe (Carlton, Victoria, AUS: Lonely Planet Global Limited, 2022).

  • Travel guide

1001 Historic Sites You Must See Before You Die, edited by Richard Cavendish (Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s, 2008).

  • Stari Mostar (Old Bridge Mostar) in Mostar, Bosnia

Ante Cuvalo, Historical Dictionary of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1997).

Macmillan Publishing Company, Macmillan Atlas of War & Peace: Bosnia, Herzegovina (New York: Macmillan, 1996).

James Minahan, Miniature Empires: A Historical Dictionary of the Newly Independent States (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998).

  • new states since 1989 and the end of the Cold War, Bosnia and Herzegovina among them

*Carole Rogel, The Breakup of Yugoslavia and the War in Bosnia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998).

 

Documentaries

Back to Bosnia, produced by Sabina Vajrača, and Ali Hanson (2005, United States: Passion River Films, 2010), DVD.

Cameraperson, directed by Kirsten Johnson (2016, New York: The Criterion Collection, 2017), DVD.

  • “A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home with the director: Kirsten Johnson weaves these scenes and others into her film, a tapestry of footage captured over her twenty-five-year career as a documentary cinematographer.”

UN Sex Abuse Scandal, produced by Ramita Naval and Sam Collyns (2018, Alexandria, VA: PBS Distribution, 2018), DVD.

  • Frontline episode 11, season 2018
  • “An investigation of sex abuse by United Nations peacekeepers in the world’s conflict zones. The film traces allegations from Bosnia to Congo to the Central African Republic, with firsthand accounts from survivors, witnesses, and officials.”

 

Poetry

Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia, edited by Chris Agee (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1998).

  • Poets of all faiths and ethnicities

Forrest Gander, “Bosnia-Herzegovina: Life is Waiting,” in Core Samples from the World (New York: New Directions, 2011).

  • Gander is an American travel writer

“El Salvador, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf,” in American War Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Lorrie Goldensohn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).

  • Poem by Adrian Oktenberg in this section

Semezdin Mehmedinović, Sarajevo Blues, translated by Ammiel Alcalay, (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1998).

  • Poetry and short stories
  • Originally in Bosnian

Adrian Oktenberg, The Bosnia Elegies: Poems (Ashfield, MA: Paris Press, 1997).

Goran Simić, Sprinting from the Graveyard (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

  • Serbian poet who survived the siege of Sarajevo with his Muslim wife and two children
  • Originally in Serbian

 

Music

The Cranberries, To the Faithful Departed (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1996), musical score.

  • Irish rock band who used their platform as musicians to highlight humanitarian crises and other activist causes
  • Last track is “Bosnia”

Frances Mary Irwin, Balkan Melodies for Accordion (Pacific, MO: Mel Bay Publications, 1997), musical score.

  • Slovenia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Serbia

Luciano Pavarotti, Pavarotti & Friends: Together for the Children of Bosnia, The Decca Records Company Limited, 1996, compact disc.

  • Pavarotti gave concerts between 1992 and 2003 for humanitarian causes – 1995 for Bosnia – collaborations with other famous people
  • Money from 1995 concert in Modena, Italy for Bosnia raised money for Pavarotti Music Center in Mostar
  • Concert attended by Princess Diana
  • Cover features images from I Dream of Peace book by UNICEF

 

Plays

Eve Ensler, Necessary Targets: A Story of Women and War (New York: Villard, 2001).

  • Play about two women, a psychiatrist and a writer, who go to Bosnia after the war to help women with their trauma and memories
  • Writer of Vagina Monologues

The Theatre of Genocide: Four Plays about Mass Murder in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Armenia, edited by Robert Skloot (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008).

  • Armenians in Lorne Shirinian’s Exile in the Cradle, Cambodians in Catherine Filloux’s Silence of God, Bosnian Muslims in Kitty Felde’s A Patch of Earth, and Rwandan Tutsis in Erik Ehn’s Maria Kizito

 

Fiction

*Jesse Armstrong, Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals (New York: Blue Rider Press, 2016).

Selvedin Avdić, Seven Terrors, trans. by Coral Petkovich (London: Istros Books, 2012).

  • Bosnian author
  • Psychological thriller about the war

Gary Barker, The Museum of Lost Love (New York: World Editions, 2019).

Bosnian War, Afghan War, Croatia, love

Lana Bastašić, Catch the Rabbit (Brooklyn, NY: Restless Books, 2021).

  • Originally published in Serbo-Croat in Belgrade, Serbia in 2018
  • About two friends (presumably one Serbian and one Bosnian) who return to Bosnia to find the Bosnian friend’s brother, twelve years after the war

Viet Dinh, After Disasters (Seattle, WA: Little A, 2016).

  • Four survivors of an earthquake in India – one is a Bosnian refugee

Slavenka Drakulić, S.: A Novel about the Balkans (New York: Viking, 2000).

  • Sexual assault
  • Fiction book about a Bosnian woman in exile who gives birth to a child

Dan Fesperman, Lie in the Dark (New York: Soho, 1999).

Fesperman was a reporter in Bosnia

  • About a detective who unravels a conspiracy because of the death of a government employee in Sarajevo’s Sniper Alley

Dan Fesperman, The Small Boat of Great Sorrows: A Novel (New York: Knopf: 2003).

  • “After leaving his homeland in Bosnia, investigator Vlado Petric finds himself embroiled in proceedings of the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague and suspects that he is being used as bait to draw out mass murderers from World War II.”

Lee Fishman, Edge of a Dream (Philadelphia, PA: TransMedia Publishing Group, 2012).

  • Two siblings who flee the war in Bosnia and resettle in the United States

Martin Fletcher, The War Reporter: A Novel (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2015).

  • TV reporter trying to take down Ratko Mladic after the war

*Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo (New York: Riverhead Books, 2008).

*Mark Greaney, One Minute Out (New York: Berkley Publishing, 2020).

Lotte and Søren Hammer, The Night Ferry (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).

  • Investigation of a boat crash in Copenhagen leads the detectives to leads in Bosnia

Jeremy Harmer, Solo Saxophone (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

  • “Cambridge English Readers” series for adults learning English

Aleksandar Hemon, The Question of Bruno (New York: Nan A. Talese, 2000).

  • Short stories about Hemon’s life as a Bosnian refugee and other topics

Lejla Kalamujić, Call Me Esteban (South Portland, ME: Sandorf Passage, 2021).

  • Pre and post war Sarajevo
  • Kalamujić a queer Bosnian writer

Ausma Zehanat Khan, A Death in Sarajevo (New York: Minotaur Books, 2017).

Ausma Zehanat Khan, The Unquiet Dead (New York: Minotaur Books, 2015).

  • Investigation of the death of an alleged Serbian war criminal

Joel Levinson, The Reluctant Hunter: A Novel (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse Inc., 2012).

*Mike Maden, Tom Clancy Line of Sight (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018), audiobook CD.

Margaret Mazzantini, Twice Born (New York: Penguin Books, 2013).

  • Made into a movie, Twice Born, with Penelope Cruz
  • About an Italian woman and widow who returns to Sarajevo with her son after the war to show her son her life with his father

Semezdin Mehmedinović, My Heart: A Novel, trans. by Celia Hawkesworth (New York: Catapult, 2021).

  • Autobiographical fiction about being a Bosnian War refugee
  • Translated from Bosnian
  • Introduction by fellow Bosnian writer Aleksander Hemon

Semezdin Mehmedinović, “Snowflake,” in Freeman’s Love: The Best New Writing on Love (New York: Grove Press, 2020).

  • Story of his wife’s illness after the war in Bosnia and as refugees

David Morrell, Double Image: A Thriller (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2001).

  • “The adventures in love and war of photographer Mitch Coltrane. In one adventure, he becomes the object of revenge by a Balkan war lord whose crimes he recorded on film, in another he searches for a beautiful woman he saw in a photograph.”

Josip Novakovich, Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005).

  • Collection of stories spanning WWI to contemporary Balkan immigrants in US and about Bosnians, Croats and Serbs and infidelity
  • Croatian writer

*Matthew Palmer, The Wolf of Sarajevo (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2016).

  1. S. Patrić, Black Rock White City (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2017).
  • Sarajevan refugees’ resettlement in Melbourne

*Ismet Prcic, Shards (New York: Black Cat, 2011).

*Jonathan Rabb, The Book of Q: A Novel (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001).

*Katija Rudolph, Little Bastards in Spring: A Novel (Hanover, New Hampshire: Steerforth Press, 2015).

*Joe Sacco, The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2003).

David Savill, They Are Trying to Break your Heart (New York : Bloomsbury, 2016).

  • Healing after the war
  • Suspense fiction

Scott Simon, Pretty Birds: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2005).

  • Scott Simon covered the Bosnian war in 1992/3
  • Famous NPR host
  • Book about a woman during the Siege of Sarajevo

Saša Stanišić, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (New York: Grove Press, 2008).

Translated from German

  • Semi-autobiographical
  • Half Bosniak half Serbian writer

*Scott Turow, Testimony (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017).

 

Films

American Renegades, directed by Steven Quale (2017, United States: EuropaCorp, 2019), DVD.

  • Originally German
  • NAVY seals find gold at the bottom of a lake in Bosnia after the war

*Behind Enemy Lines, directed by John Moore (2001, United States: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2002), DVD.

Cirkus Colombia, directed by Danis Tanović (2010, United States: Strand Releasing Home Video, 2012), DVD.

  • Bosnian film about a man who returns to Bosnia after a twenty-year exile in Germany in 1991, just as the war begins

Demony wojny w/g Goi, directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski (1998, Warsaw: Vision Film Distribution Co., 1998), DVD.

  • Translates as Demons of War
  • Polish film about peacekeepers in Bosnia who save a downed helicopter crew

The Hunting Party, directed by Richard Shepard (2007, Santa Monica, CA: Weinstein Co. Home Entertainment, 2008), DVD.

  • Journalists Richard Gere and Jesse Eisenberg hunt down a Serbian war criminal in Bosnia

*In the Land of Blood and Honey, directed by Angelina Jolie (2011, Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2012), DVD.

Twice Born, directed by Sergio Castellitto (2012, Toronto: Entertainment One, 2012), DVD.

  • In Italian, Bosnian, and English
  • TW for sexual assault

*The Whistleblower, directed by Larysa Kondracki (2011, Beverly Hills, CA: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2012), DVD.