Janine di Giovanni - Madness Visible: A Memoir of War

Janine di Giovanni took ten years out of her life to report on all those terrible wars in the former Yugoslavia. She tells us what it was really like on the frontline the squalor, the terror, the barbarity, and the randomness of death. But there was also comradeship, hope, glory and, occasionally, the triumph of the human spirit Phillip Knightley

A searing chronicle The tales she tells would do Martha Gellhorn proud, though they do not make for easy reading Wholly memorable, entirely unsettling: one of the best pieces of reportage to come from the Balkan abattoir

Kirkus Reviews

An unflinching and often harrowing volume Di Giovanni survived her experiences to tell the tale, and she does so admirably. The lessons learned are ours to take away

Waterstones Books Quarterly

Madness Visible encapsulates the integral aspects of a war correspondents life bravery and determination, discomfort and sheer bloody mindedness, terror and uncertainty Madness Visible is a salutary and essential read. Salutary because it makes you realise that the civilising effect of society is as thin as gossamer and can be lost so easily. Di Giovanni is painfully eloquent

The Resident

Gutsy harrowing and humane

Instyle

A devastating memoir of the Balkans a harrowing firsthand account of a regions spiral into madness Di Giovanni has written a tragic book that vividly memorialises the millions who suffered

Publishers Weekly

Janine di Giovannis fine book brings the personalities, tragedies and abominations of the conflict painfully to life Di Giovannis is possibly the best journalists book to come out of former Yugoslavia her truth is more powerful than fiction she manages to convey the fear, boredom, and Slivovica-soaked horror of the Yugoslav wars as few have done

Lara Marlowe, Irish Times

In the Balkans, revenge comforts, murder satisfies, mercy and justice matter to only a few people this is di Giovannis one war and she passionately documents its inhumanity

New York Times

Madness Visible is full of gripping reportage about the horrors of life during wartime Di Giovanni stands out in the pack of British war correspondents Not only does she elicit shocking testimony from survivors, but her writing about their plights is especially moving

Alex Bellos, New York Newsday

Powerful and disturbing This book is fascinating on the effect of war on reporters. Are they hardened by what they see? Di Giovanni does not spare us the blood and guts here is a reporter whose sense of humanity has been deepened by her experience

Mail on Sunday

It is compelling reportage at its best; grisly and depressing at times, of course, but also revealing

Economist

Di Giovanni offers a heartrending portrait of survivors salvaging their losses under the spectre of continuing civil unrest

Vogue

A standout among the many accounts of war in former Yugoslavia

Library Journal

She takes a sharp instrument and probes into the most tender places of those individuals caught up in and trapped by a tragedy it is gripping

San Francisco Chronicle

Her book is set in Yugoslavia, but it is not just about Yugoslavia. Its a book very much about how people truly experience war. She has captured the essence of war, its horror and its brutality

Asbury Park Press

An impressive overview of the disintegration of Yugoslavia

Booklist

Illuminating Moving [Her] stream-of-consciousness approach imbues the book with its quiet but undeniable emotional power It hurts like hell to read these accounts of the agony, fear, despair, cruelty and madness suffered these accounts remain compelling because of di Giovannis resolve to grasp each individuals frail sense of hope and shattered human dignity

San Antonio Express News

Against the Stranger: Lives in Occupied Territory
The Quick and the Dead: Under Siege in Sarajevo
Zlatas Diary: A Childs Life in Sarajevo (Introduction)

A MEMOIR OF WAR

Janine di Giovanni

The Rape of Kosovo (The Times, 1999) was adapted for this book.
In addition, portions of this book originally appeared in articles published in the Guardian,
New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Times and Vanity Fair.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to The New York Times Co.
for permission to reprint excerpts from the following articles:
Clearer Picture of Bosnia Camps by Charles Sudetic
(The New York Times, August 16, 1992). Copyright 1992 by The New York Times Co.
Top Leader of the Bosnian Serbs Now Under Attack from Within by Chris Hedges
(The New York Times, January 4, 1996). Copyright 1996 by The New York Times Co.
Albanians Killed as Kosovo Village Is Blown by Steven J. Erlanger
(The New York Times, May 15, 1999). Copyright 1999 by The New York Times Co.

Poem on page 265: Copyright 1996, 1997 David Harsent. Reprinted by kind permission of Jonathan Clowes Ltd., London, on behalf of David Harsent.

First published in Great Britain 2004
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright by Janine di Giovanni 2003

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc,
50 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3DP

A CIP catalogue record is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9781408834251

www.bloomsbury.com/janinedigiovanni

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For my big sister, Judy

While shaving, I had a conversation with myself about the incompatability of being a reporter and hanging on to a tender soul at the same time.

ROBERT CAPA, LONDON, 1941

History is an argument without end.

PIETER GEYL

In early June 1999, shortly after the liberation of Pristina, I sat in a field in Kosovo with a family of Gypsies watching the retreat of the Serbs. It was a few days after the NATO war had officially ended, and the Gypsiessome of whose ancestors had been in the Balkans since the fourteenth centurywere running away from the Kosovar Albanians.

The Albanians were returning to Kosovo with vengeful spirits after their much-televised exodus two months earlier. They were ready to kill and loot and burn, and to attack anyone they believed had aided the Serbs. The Gypsies were terrified. They protested their innocence. They said they had done nothing other than try to stay alive during wartime.

They said they were neither pro-Serb nor pro-Albanian. Still, like the Serbs, they were running, and the Albanians were repeating another violent Balkan cycle by hunting them down and expelling them. They were doing to other people exactly what had been done to them only a few weeks before: using fear as a weapon to gain territory and power.