"There is a method to presenting the reality of war in [New York] Times style," writes Chuck Sudetic, "a restrictive method but a perfectly valid one just the same. It focuses mainly on institutions and political leaders and their duties and decisions, while leaving the common folk to exemplify trends, to serve as types: a fallen soldier, a screaming mother, a dead baby.... The method is described by various terms: detachment, disinterestedness, dispassion, distancing, and others with negative prefixes engineered to obliterate any relationship between observer and observed."

Although Sudetic was able to maintain his detachment for the numerous stories he filed from the frontlines of the Bosnian war for the Times, it could not ultimately last. Blood and Vengeance examines the events leading up to the July 1995 genocidal massacre that took place in and around the town of Srebenica from the perspective of the Celik family (to whom the author is related by marriage). Sudetic ably blends the intimate chaos and terror of the Celiks' lives with broader historical and contemporary accounts that provide a fuller context for what happened. The people here are not types, but vividly portrayed individuals in whose lives the reader gradually becomes absorbed. This book ranks with Peter Maass's Love Thy Neighbor as one of the closest--and most chilling--looks at the tumultuous events that shattered post-cold war Eastern Europe. --Ron Hogan


From Publishers Weekly
At once a stunning piece of war reporting and a heartbreaking, deeply personal story, Sudetic's account of Yugoslavia's bloody breakup enfolds a family saga into an epic historical chronicle. Sudetic is a former New York Times correspondent, a Croatian-American now living in Belgrade. His Serb wife is related to the Celiks, a Muslim family who narrowly escaped death as refugees in Srebrenica in 1995, when Bosnian Serbs overran a U.N. "safe area" and decimated and expelled the town's Muslim-majority population. Tracing the Celiks' history over five generations, Sudetic illumines the inner workings of Tito's police state, charting the family's survival through the German invasion of Yugoslavia and under Communist rule. He brings history into the present when Serbia's president Slobodan Milosevic, "the prime mover in Yugoslavia's slide into chaos," precipitated a warAwith the aid of his accomplice, Croatian president Franjo TudjmanAby seizing Muslim territory. The war, according to Sudetic, was basically a landgrab by Milosevic, but was cleverly presented to the West as an age-old ethnic conflict or a struggle between Christianity and Islam. Shocking in its graphic account of atrocities committed by all sides, Sudetic's unsettling narrative gives human dimensions to a historical tragedy. Photos. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
With thorough, textured reportage Sudetic, who wrote for the New York Times from Bosnia throughout the war, examines the conflict there through the lens of one Muslim family. He follows the Celiks through several generations as they struggle to survive displacement and the loss of family members. His insightful historical analysis establishes invaluable context for readers as they plunge into the complicated historical and political animosities that tore multiple generations apart. Traveling deep behind the headlines, Sudetic's tale offers a lasting contribution to our knowledge about one of the most devastating conflicts of our time.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


A New York Times Notable Book of 1998; New York Times Book Review, 6 December 1998
An eloquent inspection of war, its crimes and their causes, pursued through several generations of a Bosnian Muslim family; by a Croatian-American journalist who covered the Balkan War for The New York Times.


Economist, 11 July 1998
This is vivid writing about real people. Dozens of books have come out about the Yugoslav wars but there must be plenty of readers who deep down are still baffled as to why Yugoslavs did this to themselves. "Blood and Vengeance" is the book for them.


The New York Times, Herbert S. Okun
The book masterfully traces in masterly fashion the course of the larger war through its impact on one Muslim family, and Sudetic's magnifying approach illuminates both the darker corners and the larger framework of the conflict.


Washington Post Book World, "Experts Pick Their Favorites of 1998," Tom Gjelten, 6 December 1998
In Chuck Sudetic's cool but powerful narrative, one senses the resounding ring of truth.


From Kirkus Reviews
This exploration of a family's experience during the Bosnian war provides unique and harrowing insight into Bosnian Serb-Muslim relations. Sudetic, a Croatian-American, made a name for himself as a hardened and accomplished war journalist for the New York Times in the early 1990s. Desensitized to the daily carnage (he describes imagining himself viewing it from an observation tower), he loved the exhilaration of the job but felt that his newspaper pieces failed to capture ``the deep structure of Bosnia itself, especially peasant Bosnia, lumpen Bosnia, the Bosnia the war had ravaged most.'' Establishing contact with the Celik family, his wife's relatives, presented him the opportunity to do just that. The extraordinary result, Blood and Vengeance, accomplishes precisely what its author set out to do, and more. Through vast personal interviewing and research, Sudetic relates the Celiks' experience of war from their origins in an isolated mountain hamlet north of Viegrad to their ill-fated flight to doomed Srebrenica, and their final flight to a refugee camp in Tuzla. But while the narrative focuses on the Celiks (who seem intimately familiar by the book's end), this account also follows the fate of Bosnian Serb families from their village. The story is rich in illuminating detail. In engaging prose, Sudetic acquaints us with the rhythms of daily life and interaction between the Bosnian Serbs and Muslims in the village of Kupusovici, as well as with their complex historical relations throughout the centuries. He sensitively evokes the character and mood of the village and this region bordering on Serbia that includes some of Bosnia's most devastated towns. In particular, Blood and Vengeance adds to our understanding of the horror that was Srebrenica before the Celiks and other Muslim refugees underwent expulsion or mass execution by Bosnian Serbs in July 1995. Among the spate of books the Bosnian crisis has generated, Sudetic's tale of one family's struggle for survival is an essential and lasting contribution. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


William H. McNeill, author of "A History of the Human Community"
Chuck Sudetic has produced a very impressive account of the Bosnian struggle that roots it in the remembered past. I remember feeling ill at ease when our TV commentators seemed totally unaware of the local ethnic-religious conflicts-and overlap and cooperation-that made what was happening both expected and surprising. Sudetic fills the gap-admirably and poignantly.


Milton Viorst, author of "In the Shadow of the Prophet"
Chuck Sudetic is an excellent reporter and a superb writer. He also has a strong sense of history. These skills have been fused by a deep passion-based on his own family's involvement-to produce a spellbinding story of the Bosnian tragedy.... A gripping read.


Sydney Schanberg, author of "The Death and Life of Dith Pran"
World leaders told us the Bosnia genocide was too complex for outsiders to do much about it when it was happening. Chuck Sudetic tells a quite different story in this fiercely reported and chilling book. Taking us across history with one Muslim family, a family he is related to, he unravels the complex and makes it not only clear but intimate.... In bearing witness, Sudetic also gives himself no quarter; you will rarely find an account that is so unflinchingly honest about how journalists function amid great suffering.


Leslie H. Gelb, author of "The Irony of Vietnam"
Sudetic tells the story of the Bosnian War with arresting and frightening intimacy. You feel as if you're reading the future.


Brian Hall, author of "The Impossible Country: A Journey Through the Last Days of Bosnia"
The best account I've read of the dynamics of violence and cowardice that doomed the 'safe area,' Srebrenica. Simultaneously humane and merciless, this is a splendid, heartbreaking book.


Christopher Hitchens, author of "The Missionary Position"
There is a devil in these details. I don't remember when I last read an account of a microcosm that better illustrated the hellish outlines of the 'big picture.'


David Rieff, author of "Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West"
Of all the reporters who covered the Bosnian war, none saw more clearly, dug more deeply or reported more acutely than Chuck Sudetic. Now, with "Blood and Vengeance," he has done nothing less than write the defining narrative of the Bosnian conflict. It is an extraordinary achievement.


Sebastian Junger, author of "The Perfect Storm"
Chuck Sudetic's writing shoves you onto the front line of Europe's most recent--and most avoidable--war from page one and doesn't let you leave. You will live and breathe Bosnia until the very last page. This is a book that desperately needs to be read.


The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Herbert S. Okun, 8 November 1998
[E]ssential reading for anyone who wants to understand the war in Bosnia. The book masterfully traces the course of the larger war through its impact on one Muslim family, and Sudetic's magnifying approach illuminates both the darker corners and the larger framework of the conflict....Sudetic tells us that in "Blood and Vengeance" he sought to delve beneath "the deep structure" of the Bosnian war. In this vital narrative he has succeeded magnificently.


Book Description
A riveting account of the events that led to the slaughter of Muslims at Srebenica--the Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee of the Bosnian conflict. In July 1995 approximately 7,000 Muslim men, women, and children died at Serbian hands in and around the old Bosnian mining town of Srebenica. It was the largest mass execution in Europe since the Nazi era; a stunning failure for the United Nations and the Western powers; and the grim watershed that led, finally, to massive NATO air strikes and the current fragile peace. How and why this shocking act of genocide was allowed to take place is still imperfectly understood. Blood and Vengeance puts a human face on the grim statistics and tangled politics of this event. Through the odyssey of one Muslim family, the Celiks of the remote mountain town of Kupusovici, journalist Chuck Sudetic tells the epic and tragic story of a people and a nation. His narrative reaches as far back as the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where the Turks conquered the Serbs, and unfolds with sweeping and inexorable power toward the Celiks' rendezvous with history in the so-called "safe area" of Srebenica. Not since The Killing Fields has as powerful a nonfiction tale of spinelessness, savagery, and heroic survival been told. Here is a book as sweeping and powerful as a panoramic, historical painting, yet with the heartbreaking intimacy of a family snapshot. Even readers who may once have felt that the Bosnian War was beyond comprehension will find themselves in its masterful grip.


From the Publisher
"Blood and Vengeance" has been chosen by "Publisher's Weekly" as one of their Best Books of the Year for 1998.


About the Author
Chuck Sudetic is a Croatian-American who is related by marriage to the Celik family. In the course of four years of reporting on the Bosnian War he filed more than 500 stories for the New York Times. He lives in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. His 1995 article for Rolling Stone on the Celik family was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for feature writing.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In July 1995 approximately 7,000 Muslim men, women, and children died under Serbian hands in and around the old Bosnian mining town of Srebrenica. Blood and Vengeance puts a human face on the grim statistics and tangled politics of this event. Through the odyssey of one Muslim family, the Celiks of the remote mountain village of Kupusovici, journalist Chuck Sudetic tells the epic and tragic story of a people and a nation. His narrative reaches beyond the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where the turks conquered the serbs, and unfolds with sweeping and inexorable power towards the Celiks' rendezvous with history in the so-called 'safe area' of Srebrenica.

FROM THE CRITICS

Tom Gjelten - New York Times Book Review

...[A] narrative so rich and strong it not only describes the crime but dares to explain it and does so with eloquence and dignity.

Herbert Okus - New York Times

Mr. Sudetic. . . sought to delve beneath surface events and to uncover 'the deep structure' of the Bosnian war. In this vital narrative he has succeeded magnificently.

Publishers Weekly

At once a stunning piece of war reporting and a heartbreaking, deeply personal story, Sudetic's account of Yugoslavia's bloody breakup enfolds a family saga into an epic historical chronicle. Sudetic is a former New York Times correspondent, a Croatian-American now living in Belgrade. His Serb wife is related to the Celiks, a Muslim family who narrowly escaped death as refugees in Srebrenica in 1995, when Bosnian Serbs overran a U.N. 'safe area' and decimated and expelled the town's Muslim-majority population. Tracing the Celiks' history over five generations, Sudetic illumines the inner workings of Tito's police state, charting the family's survival through the German invasion of Yugoslavia and under Communist rule. He brings history into the present when Serbia's president Slobodan Milosevic, 'the prime mover in Yugoslavia's slide into chaos,' precipitated a war with the aid of his accomplice, Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, by seizing Muslim territory. The war, according to Sudetic, was basically a landgrab by Milosevic, but was cleverly presented to the West as an age-old ethnic conflict or a struggle between Christianity and Islam. Shocking in its graphic account of atrocities committed by all sides, Sudetic's unsettling narrative gives human dimensions to a historical tragedy. (PW best book of 1998)

Library Journal

With thorough, textured reportage Sudetic, who wrote for the New York Times from Bosnia throughout the war, examines the conflict there through the lens of one Muslim family. He follows the Celiks through several generations as they struggle to survive displacement and the loss of family members. His insightful historical analysis establishes invaluable context for readers as they plunge into the complicated historical and political animosities that tore multiple generations apart. Traveling deep behind the headlines, Sudetic's tale offers a lasting contribution to our knowledge about one of the most devastating conflicts of our time.

Herbert Okus