During the Bosnian War, the cosmopolitan city of Sarajevo was blockaded and under fire from April 1992 to February 1996, making it the longest siege in modern warfare. In addition to artillery fire, including anti-aircraft missiles, Serb snipers made daily life in the city extremely perilous. In addition, electricity, water, and gas were turned on only sporadically, and communications were almost completely cut. The UN launched humanitarian airlifts, but they often operated at the whim of the Serbs who controlled the airport. Rations from the Vietnam War comprised a surprising amount of the donated food. Before it was over, over 5,400 civilians would be killed, including 1,600 children.

Barbara Demick, most famous for her book Nothing to Envy about North Korea, was a young reporter during the Bosnian War. She first went to Sarajevo in January 1994, and she spent the better part of two years there. She focused on a single neighborhood, Logavina Street, and rented a room from an elderly couple. Her boots-on-the-ground approach allowed her to forge long-term relationships with her interviewees, and she returned in July 2011 to write a follow-up to her original book. In her introduction, Demick acknowledges the rather naïve perspective of her younger self, but decided not to rework the book when she republished it with the 2011 chapter.

I was a young adult during the Bosnian War, and it made a strong impact on me at the time. But in the aftermath of all the wars and genocides perpetrated since then, Sarajevo had faded into the background. Reading Besieged brought it all back, and I found it emotionally difficult reading. Because Demick interviews so many people, and follows ten families in particular, I found it a bit difficult to keep track of everyone. After a couple of chapters, I decided to stop trying and let the stories wash over me, to a better effect. The details of everyday life, like recipes on how to make wiener schnitzel with bread instead of meat or whether or not to burn the couch for heat, make the war seem immediate again. A single child making it out of the city and to America for medical treatment is both a cause for celebration and a symbol of how isolated the residents were. The book is not a "balanced account" of the war, but a glimpse of how the Muslim, Serb, and Croatian residents of the besieged city lived and died. ( )

"The 'Jerusalem of Europe'- a city of Muslims and Catholic and Orthodox and Jews"
By sally tarbox on 29 October 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
Published in 1996 and written by a journalist stationed in Sarajevo, covering the war years, this is a moving and vivid portrayal of the lives and experiences of the people of just one street in the Bosnian capital.
I learned so much from this extremely readable account. The racial differences which we tend to perceive as cut and dried were so fluid in the tolerant and multi-ethnic city, where many were in mixed marriages, and where muslims were far from the often separate and hostile group we tend to see in our midst but happy to live like their neighbours, only distinguishable by their names. As President Izetbegovic observed, any attempt to divide the ethnic groups of Bosnia would be 'like trying to separate cornmeal and flour after they were stirred in the same bowl."

For 3 1/2 years Sarajevo was under siege by Serb aggressors, snipers in the hills picking off civilian targets. With little gas, electricity and water and minimal rations, life was traumatic and grim. Everyone experienced deaths and injuries; some escaped, some resolutely stuck it out; the UN presence was pretty useless. The Americans who could have intervened sooner kept procrastinating... and when the Dayton Agreement was finally signed, it seemed that the Serbs were almost rewarded for their aggression by being granted a Serb enclave within Bosnia.
Told from the perspectives of many different people - soldiers, schoolkids, OAPs, Muslims and Serbs, this book makes a complex situation come to life. ( )

The book could be better organised, some parts of the book seem to be going around in circles. ( )