Letters from Sarajevo: Voices of a Besieged City [Hardcover]

Anna Cataldi (Author, Editor), Avril Bardoni (Editor, Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1994

After reading this book, no one can claim not to know what is happening in Sarajevo. The voices of the war victims--Croats, Muslims, and Serbs, men, women, and children--speak poignantly through these letters which were smuggled out of the country to the outside world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Cataldi, UNICEF's international media consultant in Sarajevo who also wrote the film treatment for Oscar Award-winner Out of Africa , collected these letters from Sarajevo residents to friends and family abroad. Despite the extensive media coverage of the horrors of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, "The truth about this tragic folly can only be told," Cataldi notes, "by those who are involved in it and have no way out." With few exceptions, these letters are from anonymous writers who relate the details of their everyday lives in the besieged city: how many candles they burn, where they get water, how they keep warm, what they scavenge for dinner, who was killed. Although the letters were not intended for public consumption and most are filled with personal references, the homely information about these lives of ordinary people in the midst of terror and destruction have a powerful cumulative impact that Cataldi hopes will evoke a greater humanitarian response to residents' plight. She also recounts her own experiences in Sarajevo and provides a chronology of events.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Cataldi, a UNICEF international media consultant in Italy, was sent several times to Sarajevo to assist with relief programs. On each visit, city residents would ask her to mail letters to relatives and friends who had already fled "the largest concentration camp in the world," where an orange was a rare treat. Sporadic postal communications to the outside world was severed in April 1993 and telephone communcations in June. As a response to the horrors she had witnessed, Cataldi has gathered some 80 letters covering the period April 1992 to September 1993. While her disjointed presentation makes this book less effective than Zlata Filipovic's Zlata's Diary (LJ 4/15/94) in describing the prolonged effects of sustained misery, it does convey the writers' determination to survive and to see loved ones once again. For popular collections.
Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Element Books Ltd (May 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1852305002
• ISBN-13: 978-1852305000
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,120,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Education of Emotions, May 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Letters from Sarajevo: Voices of a Besieged City (Hardcover)

If you think you know all there is to know about Sarajevo from news reports and critical analyses, read this book. It will change your mind. The letters can be heartbreaking, inspiring, utterly depressing, hopeful...even all at the same time. The accounts from children especially took my breath away. The only thing lacking in this book is an epilogue. You feel so close to the letter writers, the urge to know whether they've survived and, if so, how, is overwhelming.