Loyd - My War Gone By, I Miss It So

Praise for My War Gone By, I Miss It So

An account of horrors that will wipe out any thoughts you might have had that we have reached the limit of the worst human nature has to offer. The monstrosities he describes are beyond belief. But the book is also compelling for what it tells us about fear.

National Geographic Adventure

My War Gone By, I Miss It So moves at the pace of a thriller. Why bother reading war fiction when you can read such intense reporting?

LA Weekly

Brave and admirable... with vivid descriptions of shelling, human suffering, and new depths of fear.

Christian Science Monitor

Loyd has used a zoom lens to put his readers nose to nose with the surreal and horrifying brutalities [in Bosnia]... this book is so powerful that, at times, you will have to put it down. But not for long.

Denver Post

A raw and ragged book... visceral, rife with urges that chaos and anonymity spur... an angry, confused howl against the obliteration of all we consider humane. Loyd has taken a step toward resuscitating the somnolent language of conflict-at-a-distance, bringing a war often seen through a haze of euphemism into sharp and jarring focus. This great horror in a century of horrors finally has its jeremiad.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Loyd has a matter-of-fact writing style that augments rather than softens the carnage.... He describes both wars from a ground-level view, making them more understandable while maintaining their chaotic feel: a difficult, yet appreciated balancing act. He humanizes how inhuman war can be.... Loyd has gone to hell and back and is telling us what hes seen in sometimes beautiful, always pungent prose.

Seattle Times

A testament to his honor and courage. And while it would be impossible for one man to tell the whole story, his book shines with small truths and larger, philosophical ones about life and war.

New York Post

Loyds rebellious irritation and visceral response to the atrocities around him give uncommon immediacy to this thoughtful, unpretentious memoir of the war in Bosnia.

San Francisco Chronicle

An extraordinary evocation of the war in Bosnia, that is also a painful personal story.... He sketches an almost unbearable picture of the carnage... [no other book] takes the reader deeper into the domestic heart of the conflict as this idiosyncratic, unsparingly graphic, refreshingly self-critical, and beautifully written memoir.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Writing with a combat veterans dark knowledge and a seasoned war correspondents edgy, hesitant desire to cling to some sort of confidence in humanity, Loyd delivers a searing firsthand account of the war in Bosnia that successfully blends autobiographical confession and war reportage.... Not like any other book on the Yugoslav war, his gripping, viscerally subjective chronicle puts a human face on the tragedy as it mourns the strangled soul of multiethnic Bosnia.

Publishers Weekly

The stark, often lyrical quality of his prose accentuates the surreal atmosphere of wartime... Loyds account blends personal revelation with biting commentary on diplomacy and war. By turns horrifying, contemplative, and savagely funny, this memoir captures the peculiar ferocity ethnic and religious civil strife.... This unforgettable work ranks with the great modern accounts of war and should be in every library.

Library Journal

A simultaneously cold and impassioned chronicle of a love affair with war, a disturbing and sometimes embarrassing mix of self-loathing and self-justification written with acrid candor... he invokes the ritual poetry of violence: the stunning transformation of live flesh into mist and offal, the voraciousness of fear, the classic juxtaposition of innocence and gore.

Newsday

Loyd steadfastly writes from [an] unromantic point of view, refusing to give lip service to the vacuous, sound-bite moralisms and historical nuggets he sees most journalists resorting to in Bosnia... he tells the unvarnished truth, no mean feat in such a diabolically convoluted and tragic conflict.

Chicago Tribune

Riveting, firsthand, intensely personal accounts of horror... by turns looking at the convexity of war in Bosnia and the concavity of the war going on inside the author, as he wrestles with questions as mundane as addiction and as exalted as theology.

San Jose Mercury News

A masterpiece of gore by a war correspondent whose words are worth a thousand pictures... [Loyd is] a writer of astonishing talent, with a sense of humor as dark as the inside of a Kalashnikovs barrel.

San Diego Union Tribune

Not your fathers front-line reporting. This may just be the flat-on-your-belly grittiest coverage to come out of those tormented killing zones thus far.

Dallas Morning News

Lose yourself in Loyds surreal world... then return to your own reality. What a trip. What a wild, wrenching ride you will give yourself.... The fear he feels you feel. The bloodied bodies he sees you see. The courage he musters to save the life of a child you cheer.... My War Gone By, I Miss It So will long be considered a gem of wartime journalism.

Albuquerque Journal

Exceptionally well written and a devastating reminder that there are still places where the particular hell of war is the everyday norm.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Surreal and chilling... a fascinating look at war from a front-row seat... he succeeds in his most impossible of missions: to explain the inexplicable.

Denver Rocky Mountain News

A dazzling, hallucinogenic, harrowing and utterly riveting book.... Loyd manages to get on the inside and look out, and so provides a perspective on hatred, cruelty, and human depravity that is sobering and terrifying.

Hartford Courant

Gruesome, gritty... a compelling book, engaging and stylistically both elegant and accessible... the descriptive detail is stunningly realized, and the anecdotes are often shrewd and revealing... [of ] his keen susceptibility to risk, pain, and fear.

Tucson Weekly

A truly exceptional book, one of those rare moments in journalistic writing when you can sit back and realize that you are in the presence of somebody willing to take the supreme risk for a writer, of extending their inner self.... I read his story of war and addiction (to conflict and to heroin) with a sense of gratitude for the honesty and courage on every page.

The Independent (UK)

MY WAR GONE BY,
I MISS IT SO

MY WAR GONE BY,
I MISS IT SO

Anthony Loyd

Grove Press

New York

Copyright 1999 by Anthony Loyd

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10003.

An Irish Airman Forsees His Death by W. B. Yeats is reproduced by permission of A. P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of Michael B. Yates.

Maps of Bosnia and Hercegovina and Chechnya are courtesy of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Loyd, Anthony.

My war gone by, I miss it so / Anthony Loyd.