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Beyond the Mountains of the Damned : The War Inside Kosovo by Matthew McAllester (2003, Trade Paperback)

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About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherNew York University Press

ISBN-100814756611

ISBN-139780814756614

eBay Product ID (ePID)2890329

Product Key Features

Number of Pages240 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NameBeyond the Mountains of the Damned : the War inside Kosovo

SubjectEurope / Eastern, Genocide & War Crimes, World / European

Publication Year2003

TypeTextbook

Subject AreaPolitical Science, History

AuthorMatthew Mcallester

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.6 in

Item Weight12.7 Oz

Item Length9 in

Item Width6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

Dewey Edition21

eBook FormatOpen Ebook

Reviews"Beyond the Mountains of the Damned is about how war destroys society at its most basic level. I read this and understood what happened to ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances during those dark and desperate days in Kosovo. It is a book I will not forget." -Janine di Giovanni,special correspondent, Vanity Fair and the Times of London, "A heart-rending tale of the execution of innocents, told with eloquence and compassion by a brilliant and courageous young journalist. What is astonishing about this story of death in Pec is that it actually took place in the last year of the twentieth century and in supposedly civilized Europe. Through the life of Isa the butcher, Matt McAllester graphically depicts the precariousness of life in Kosovo under Slobodan Milosevic, and the compromises and indignities imposed upon anyone who through the accident of birth had an Albanian ethnic identity. What makes this a path-breaking account is the author's drive to find the sadistic killers who shot children in cold blood, and his insistence that they explain their crime. The story is unforgettable." -Roy Gutman,Pulitzer Prize winner and author of A Witness toGenocide , Newsweek diplomatic correspondent, "Matthew McAllester's Beyond the Mountains of the Damned tells the searing and disturbing story of the war in Kosovo. He explains clearly, as few have, what happened and why, and why it matters. His powerful narrative takes us down roads, past checkpoints, and into battle zones, and it plunges us into strange, sad, scarred places where no other reporter has gone. The book has a drive and a momentum that keep you reading even when the sheer horror and stupidity of events is painful. A human as well as a historic tale, told with an eye and an ear for the personal, the individual, the intimate." -Amy Wilentz,author of Martyrs' Crossing and The Rainy Season: Haiti since Duvalier, To write this book, Matt McAllester walked through mountains covered with snow and hatred with rifle shots aimed at him from above. He wrote it with extraordinary talent that is equal to his bravery., "Beyond the Mountains of the Damned is about how war destroys society at its most basic level. I read this and understood what happened to ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances during those dark and desperate days in Kosovo. It is a book I will not forget." - Janine di Giovanni, special correspondent,Vanity Fairand theTimes of London, "A heart-rending tale of the execution of innocents, told with eloquence and compassion by a brilliant and courageous young journalist. What is astonishing about this story of death in Pec is that it actually took place in the last year of the twentieth century and in supposedly civilized Europe. Through the life of Isa the butcher, Matt McAllester graphically depicts the precariousness of life in Kosovo under Slobodan Milosevic, and the compromises and indignities imposed upon anyone who through the accident of birth had an Albanian ethnic identity. What makes this a path-breaking account is the author's drive to find the sadistic killers who shot children in cold blood, and his insistence that they explain their crime. The story is unforgettable." - Roy Gutman, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of A Witness to Genocide , Newsweek diplomatic correspondent, "Matthew McAllester's Beyond the Mountains of the Damned tells the searing and disturbing story of the war in Kosovo. He explains clearly, as few have, what happened and why, and why it matters. His powerful narrative takes us down roads, past checkpoints, and into battle zones, and it plunges us into strange, sad, scarred places where no other reporter has gone. The book has a drive and a momentum that keep you reading even when the sheer horror and stupidity of events is painful. A human as well as a historic tale, told with an eye and an ear for the personal, the individual, the intimate." - Amy Wilentz, author ofMartyrs' Crossing and The Rainy Season: Haiti since Duvalier, "Very few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs." - Tricycle, Winner, Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2002, Non-Fiction "In badly constructed books, the reader doesn't care what happens on the next page. In well-constructed books, the reader can't wait to see what happens on the next page. This book is a rare, third kind: The reader dreads what will happen on the next page. Nevertheless, he feels compelled to read on. . . . McAllester takes the reader not only along the streets where atrocities have been committed but inside homes while they are happening. As is the case with many good reads, the power of such scenes comes from the order in which events are presented. First the author develops a character, then later in the book informs you about his fate. Or the author will describe how a family is brutalized, then describes, almost as an aside -- in the course of a succeeding chapter about his own adventures in war-torn Kosovo -- how he meets a traumatized eyewitness to the previous account. In this way, the reader becomes an observer not only of what was happening inside Kosovo during the NATO bombardment but of what was happening to McAllester himself and how he managed to assemble his book."-- Washington Post "The power of McAllester's extraordinary book lies not in its comprehensiveness or its literary polish-though there are many brilliantly moving and perceptive passages-but in its shocking authenticity and deep moral concern. One gets the sense that he risked his life not simply to pursue a story, timely and important as it was, but because of the enormity of the evil being done and his conviction that, in a world of bland policy abstractions, what happened in those days inside Kosovo had to be told."-- New Leader "McAllester powerfully concludes that a sickening mixture of greed, ethnic hostility, and wartime nihilism has displaced the healing power for love and reconciliation for the forseeable future. One of the most thoughtful accounts of the conflict in Kosovo to date conveyed with taut journalistic clarity that should ensure the book a broad range of readers."-- Kirkus, Starred Review "This account is not of the 'virtual war' that Westerners saw on their television screens but of the real effects on people who consider the ravaged area home."-- Library Journal, Starred Review "McAllester's spare, understated prose is potent as is his exploration of the human side of geopolitics and war."-- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "In a twist that took McAllester as much by surprise as it will the reader, it appears that Isa Bala lived in that ill-defined world too, a world where people make deals and concessions just to survive another day. Perhaps he believed that through such compromises, his family would be safe. if so, he was tragically wrong."-- Sunday Telegraph (London) " Beyond the Mountains of the Damned is a gripping, if depressing, account of what McAllester found among the ruins. . . . There is no bravado. . . . He offers vivid thumbnail sketches of Kosovar warriors in the field."-- Newsday "McAllester offers us the kind of specific detail that we need to make other people's lives human to us. Even more importantly, he tells us how it is to be the oppressor, or at least one of the minions of the oppressors"-- American Book Review, Matthew McAllester's Beyond the Mountains of the Damned tells the searing and disturbing story of the war in Kosovo. He explains clearly, as few have, what happened and why, and why it matters. His powerful narrative takes us down roads, past checkpoints, and into battle zones, and it plunges us into strange, sad, scarred places where no other reporter has gone. The book has a drive and a momentum that keep you reading even when the sheer horror and stupidity of events is painful. A human as well as a historic tale, told with an eye and an ear for the personal, the individual, the intimate., "No effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience." - The Times Higher Education Supplement, "To write this book, Matt McAllester walked through mountains covered with snow and hatred with rifle shots aimed at him from above. He wrote it with extraordinary talent that is equal to his bravery." - Jimmy Breslin, "To write this book, Matt McAllester walked through mountains covered with snow and hatred with rifle shots aimed at him from above. He wrote it with extraordinary talent that is equal to his bravery." -Jimmy Breslin ,, Beyond the Mountains of the Damned is about how war destroys society at its most basic level. I read this and understood what happened to ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances during those dark and desperate days in Kosovo. It is a book I will not forget., "Matthew McAllester's Beyond the Mountains of the Damned tells the searing and disturbing story of the war in Kosovo. He explains clearly, as few have, what happened and why, and why it matters. His powerful narrative takes us down roads, past checkpoints, and into battle zones, and it plunges us into strange, sad, scarred places where no other reporter has gone. The book has a drive and a momentum that keep you reading even when the sheer horror and stupidity of events is painful. A human as well as a historic tale, told with an eye and an ear for the personal, the individual, the intimate." - Amy Wilentz, author of Martyrs' Crossing and The Rainy Season: Haiti since Duvalier, "The books line up on my shelf like bright Bodhisattvas ready to take tough questions or keep quiet company. They stake out a vast territory, with works from two millennia in multiple genres: aphorism, lyric, epic, theater, and romance." - Willis G. Regier, The Chronicle Review, "A heart-rending tale of the execution of innocents, told with eloquence and compassion by a brilliant and courageous young journalist. What is astonishing about this story of death in Pec is that it actually took place in the last year of the twentieth century and in supposedly civilized Europe. Through the life of Isa the butcher, Matt McAllester graphically depicts the precariousness of life in Kosovo under Slobodan Milosevic, and the compromises and indignities imposed upon anyone who through the accident of birth had an Albanian ethnic identity. What makes this a path-breaking account is the author's drive to find the sadistic killers who shot children in cold blood, and his insistence that they explain their crime. The story is unforgettable." - Roy Gutman, Pulitzer Prize winner and author ofA Witness to Genocide,Newsweekdiplomatic correspondent, A heart-rending tale of the execution of innocents, told with eloquence and compassion by a brilliant and courageous young journalist. What is astonishing about this story of death in Pec is that it actually took place in the last year of the twentieth century and in supposedly civilized Europe. Through the life of Isa the butcher, Matt McAllester graphically depicts the precariousness of life in Kosovo under Slobodan Milosevic, and the compromises and indignities imposed upon anyone who through the accident of birth had an Albanian ethnic identity. What makes this a path-breaking account is the author's drive to find the sadistic killers who shot children in cold blood, and his insistence that they explain their crime. The story is unforgettable., "To write this book, Matt McAllester walked through mountains covered with snow and hatred with rifle shots aimed at him from above. He wrote it with extraordinary talent that is equal to his bravery." -Jimmy Breslin

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal949.7103

Table Of ContentAcknowledgmentsIntroduction 1. One Town, Two Lives 2. The Ghosts of Kula Pass 3. Staying Behind 4. The Serbian Canterbury 5. The Friendly Lion and the KLA 6. In the Trunk of a Gray BMW 7. Coffee with Zejnepe 8. Burning 9. Agreements 10. The Illyrian Wolves 11. A Silent Town 12. The Killing 13. A White Plastic Bag in the Long Grass 14. New Roofs,New Cof?ns 15. The Butcher's Business Bibliography About the Author

SynopsisWinner, Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2002, Non-Fiction The story of Pec--Kosovo's most destroyed city during the wars in Serbia For every survivor of a crime, there is a criminal who forces his way into the victim's thoughts long after the act has been committed. Reporters weren't allowed into Kosovo during the war without the permission of the Yugoslavian government but Matthew McAllester went anyway. In Beyond the Mountains of the Damned he tells the story of Pec, Kosovo's most destroyed city and the site of the earliest and worst atrocities of the war, through the lives of two men--one Serb and one Kosovar. They had known each other, and been neighbors for years before one visited tragedy on the other. With a journalist's eye for detail McAllester asks the great question of war: What kind of men could devastate an entire city, killing whole families, and feel no sense of guilt? The answer lies in the culture of gangsterism and ethnic hatred that began with the collapse of Yugoslavia., For every survivor of a crime, there is a criminal who forces his way into the victim's thoughts long after the act has been committed. Reporters weren't allowed into Kosovo during the war without the permission of the Yugoslavian government but Matthew McAllester went anyway. In Beyond the Mountains of the Damned he tells the story of Pec, Kosovo's most destroyed city and the site of the earliest and worst atrocities of the war, through the lives of two men - one Serb and one Kosovar. They had known each other, and been neighbors for years before one visited tragedy on the other. With a journalist's eye for detail McAllester asks the great question of war: What kind of men could devastate an entire city, killing whole families, and feel no sense of guilt? The answer lies in the culture of gangsterism and ethnic hatred that began with the collapse of Yugoslavia. In March of 1999, the world watched thousands of Albanian refugees pour out of Kosovo, carrying stories of the terror that drove them from their homes. To Isa Bala and his family, Albanian Muslims who stayed in Pec during the NATO bombardment, the war in Kosovo was not about cruise missiles and geopolitics. It was about tiptoeing between survival and death in the town that saw the fiercest destruction, the most thorough eviction of the Albanian population and killings whose brutality demands explanation. To Nebojsa Minic and other Serb militiamen who ruled with murder, the conflict was about the exercise of power. Today they are alive and well in the new Yugoslavia. So unconcerned are they over the prospect of ever being held accountable for their crimes that they were willing to sit down over coffee after the war and discuss in detail their brief, brutal reign., For every survivor of a crime, there is a criminal who forces his way into the victim's thoughts long after the act has been committed. This is the story of Pec, Kosovo's most destroyed city and the site of the earliest and worst atrocities of the war, through the lives of two men-one Serb and one Kosovar., Winner, Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2002, Non-Fiction For every survivor of a crime, there is a criminal who forces his way into the victim's thoughts long after the act has been committed. Reporters weren't allowed into Kosovo during the war without the permission of the Yugoslavian government but Matthew McAllester went anyway. In Beyond the Mountains of the Damned he tells the story of Pec, Kosovo's most destroyed city and the site of the earliest and worst atrocities of the war, through the lives of two men--one Serb and one Kosovar. They had known each other, and been neighbors for years before one visited tragedy on the other. With a journalist's eye for detail McAllester asks the great question of war: What kind of men could devastate an entire city, killing whole families, and feel no sense of guilt? The answer lies in the culture of gangsterism and ethnic hatred that began with the collapse of Yugoslavia. In March of 1999, the world watched thousands of Albanian refugees pour out of Kosovo, carrying stories of the terror that drove them from their homes. To Isa Bala and his family, Albanian Muslims who stayed in Pec during the NATO bombardment, the war in Kosovo was not about cruise missiles and geopolitics. It was about tiptoeing between survival and death in the town that saw the fiercest destruction, the most thorough eviction of the Albanian population and killings whose brutality demands explanation. To Nebojsa Minic and other Serb militiamen who ruled with murder, the conflict was about the exercise of power. Today they are alive and well in the new Yugoslavia. So unconcerned are they over the prospect of ever being held accountable for their crimes that they were willing to sit down over coffee after the war and discuss in detail their brief, brutal reign.

LC Classification NumberDR2087.2.P43M33 2003