From Publishers Weekly
What causes people to participate in genocide? Respected Croatian journalist Drakulic (How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed) set out to explore the psyches of the people who turned her former country, Yugoslavia, into a killing field in the early 1990s. Observing them on trial for war crimes before the International Tribunal in the Hague, Drakulic depicts the perpetrators, from Radomir Kovac, who raped young girls, to the delusional former Serb president Slobodan Milosevic, often from the point of view of the perpetrators themselves. The novelistic imputation of imagined thoughts can be distracting. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, the snapshots are powerful and horrifying: they include a chilling description of the slaughter at Srebrenica through the eyes of a reluctant Bosnian soldier forced to kill or be killed, and a portrayal of an entire town's complicity in the murder of a Croatian militiaman after he courageously testified before the tribunal. Drakulic's analysis of why people choose evil—fear, opportunism, propaganda, lust for power and identity, historical grievances—offers little that's new, and her conclusion—"if ordinary people committed war crimes, it means that any of us begs the question of why some found the courage to say no. But her focus on the perpetrators and their apparently inexplicable moral choices forces us to face the questions of good and evil these crimes raise. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Washington Post
Drakulic´ is a perceptive and amusing social critic with a wonderful eye for detail.
Michael Ignatieff
Slavenka Drakulic´ is a courageous and passionate writer.
Book Description
In her novel S., Slavenka Drakulic´ explored the horror of genocide and the lives that were ripped apart during the Bosnian conflict of the early 1990s. Now, in They Would Never Hurt a Fly, she confronts one of the consequences of that war—the prisoners being tried at The Hague for their war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. During that terrible and bloody clash, countless humans were tortured, raped, and murdered—unspeakable acts committed in the name of "ethnic cleansing" and all authorized by the government. Drakulic´ introduces readers to the accused—from the infamous to the unknown to the unquestionably guilty, including former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic´—seeking to understand the people behind the horrific crimes. She asserts that the trials are important not just because of the dead, but also because of the living. "In the end," she writes about the war criminals, "what matters... is one single important question: what would I do in their situation?"
About the Author
Slavenka Drakulic was born in Croatia in 1949. The author of several works of nonfiction and novels, she has written for The New York Times, The Nation, The New Republic, and numerous publications around the world.
They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trail in the Hague FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Slavenka Drakulic confronts one of recent history's most difficult and important subjects in her new book, They Would Never Hurt a Fly. An examination of the war criminals being prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, the book shows Drakulic at her most incisive as she seeks to understand the people behind the horrific crimes committed during the most brutal conflict in Europe in the last fifty years." Drawing partly on her own observations of the trials, partly on other sources, Drakulic portrays some of the individuals accused of murder, rape, torture, ordering executions, and more during the war that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Notable among them are former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic; Radislav Krstic, the first to be sentenced for genocide; Biljana Plavsic, the only woman accused of war crimes; and Ratko Mladic, in hiding and being tried in absentia. Drakulic also tells the stories of Milan Levar, a war veteran and witness who was murdered when he tried to speak out, and of Mirjana Mira Markovic, the influential wife of Milosevic.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
What causes people to participate in genocide? Respected Croatian journalist Drakulic (How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed) set out to explore the psyches of the people who turned her former country, Yugoslavia, into a killing field in the early 1990s. Observing them on trial for war crimes before the International Tribunal in the Hague, Drakulic depicts the perpetrators, from Radomir Kovac, who raped young girls, to the delusional former Serb president Slobodan Milosevic, often from the point of view of the perpetrators themselves. The novelistic imputation of imagined thoughts can be distracting. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, the snapshots are powerful and horrifying: they include a chilling description of the slaughter at Srebrenica through the eyes of a reluctant Bosnian soldier forced to kill or be killed, and a portrayal of an entire town's complicity in the murder of a Croatian militiaman after he courageously testified before the tribunal. Drakulic's analysis of why people choose evil-fear, opportunism, propaganda, lust for power and identity, historical grievances-offers little that's new, and her conclusion-"if ordinary people committed war crimes, it means that any of us begs the question of why some found the courage to say no. But her focus on the perpetrators and their apparently inexplicable moral choices forces us to face the questions of good and evil these crimes raise. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Acclaimed Croatian writer Drakulic has captured the parodies of the Balkan region through commentary (Caf Europa) and fiction (S: A Novel About the Balkans). Her latest, a collection of essays about the Balkan war criminals on trial in The Hague, follows her tradition of taking the historical personally in an effort to reach the underlying truth. And no matter how elusive the truth may be and whether one agrees with her conclusions, Drakulic succeeds fully in making us think twice about the causes of war crimes and their frightening commonness. Devoting a chapter to each criminal (e.g., Slobodan Milosevic, Ratko Mladic), Drakulic probes past and present with a determination that climaxes in the forceful last chapter, "Why We Need Monsters." The lesson learned is that "only if we understand that most perpetrators are people like us can we see that we too might one day be in danger of succumbing to the same kind of pressure." Drakulic is to be commended for drawing our attention to these trials, especially as many Americans struggle to rationalize the recent actions of their soldiers in Iraq. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/04; for a Q&A with Drakulic, see p.102.]-Mirela Roncevic, Library Journal Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Croatian expatriate Drakulic (S., 2000, etc.) offers a philosophically charged indictment of onetime Yugoslavians now standing before the International War Crimes Tribunal. Ordinary people do not commit monstrous crimes; and because we are ordinary people, we could not have committed monstrous crimes in the past. So goes the human impulse to explain away atrocities; so goes the refusal, throughout the former Yugoslavia, to admit that something horrible happened not so very long ago. "But once you get closer to the real people who committed those crimes," writes the Croatian expatriate Drakulic, "you see that the syllogism doesn't really work." Ordinary people do indeed do terrible things. Sitting in a courtroom in The Hague, Drakulic searches their faces and their files for signs of madness, an explanation for their deeds as something other than a sick response to peer pressure or a cosmic dare. (Explaining why those 80 or so men-and a couple of women-shed their ordinary lives to become killers is of paramount importance, Drakulic holds, because otherwise they will be eulogized as war heroes back home.) Their trials are dull matters, she admits, a far cry from the witty back-and-forth of Hollywood film, but from them bits and pieces of truth emerge. Some of the killers are pathological, likely murderers in peacetime or war, but otherwise the proverbial guy next door; in the title essay, one defendant, in his mid-20s at the time of slaughtering more than a hundred people in a single month in 1992, remarks, "It is nice to kill people this way. I kill them nicely. I don't feel anything." Others, such as the former Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic, killed (or had others kill) out ofambition: in Milosevic's case, it appears that he thought war would keep him in power. Others were bureaucrats, anxious to please the boss. Still others merely went with the flow. And thousands died. Take it from Drakulic: Ordinary people suck.
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