From Enemy Territory: Pale Diary

(Paperback)

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Set at the outbreak of the war in Yugoslavia, the author of this work, a Croatian writer and editor for Sarajevo television, kept a diary of the extraordinary events unfolding around him. Mladen Vuksanovic lived with his family in the hillside suburb of Pale, which became a vantage point for Bosnian Serbs launching attacks on the city. In 1992, when Pale annexed itself from the rest of the city and a Bosnian Serb television station was set up in the town, the author abandoned his job and confined himself to his home, expressing his terror and disgust in his diary. It was several months before Vuksanovic managed to escape from Pale with his family and during that time he describes in chilling detail not only the horrifying war, and the looting, stealing and betrayal that became commonplace, but also the mental strain of war on the individual. This diary was written under permanent fear of discovery and was smuggled out of Pale to the Hungarian border at the risk of torture and reprisals.

Reviews

'Mladen Vuksanoviae writes about the rebirth of fascism in the '90s, not the '30s. This is what renders his account so deeply shocking, yet at the same time so extremely important.' -from foreword by Joschka Fischer, German Federal Foreign Minster

Author Bio

Mladen Vuksanovic was born in Pale in 1942, to a Bosnian Croat mother and a Bosnian Serb father. An award-winning screenwriter and editor for Sarajevo TV before the war, Vuksanovic published this book in Zagreb in 1996. He died in 1999; his novel, Taksi za Jahorinu (Taxi to Jahorina), was published posthumously in 2000.