Customer Reviews

This Is Serbia Calling (Five Star Fiction S.)

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"This Is Serbia Calling" provides one of the best available narratives of the beleaguered Serbian resistance to the dead-end oppression and hopelessness of the Milosevic regime of the 1990s. Original interviews with key players--including some who remain at odds with each other--give this book its authenticity of perspective and its welcome humanity.

My only complaint would be with the way this book is promoted; I was kind of expecting a Balkan version of "Pirate Radio," but this is a more serious historical rendering, and a much wider overview than just a story of the day-to-day running of an independent radio station. The picture that emerges of B92 is multifaceted, tremendously clear-eyed, and inspiring, but B92 is only one strand within the larger narrative here of the resistance in general.

Collin's book stands perfectly well on its own, but also makes a nice companion piece to the first-person narratives of Zograf's "Regards from Serbia" and Tesanovic's "Diary of a Political Idiot." Accessible and enlightening--even kind of fun in places--this is a worthy entry, occupying its own special niche, in the literature on post-Tito/post-Yugoslavia Serbia.

(Note this obviously appears to be the same book, under different title and cover, as "Guerrilla Radio: Rock 'N' Roll Radio and Serbia's Underground Resistance.")