He gets himself a bare-bones qualification in photojournalism, a smattering of Serbian from a restaurant-owner’s daughter, throws some bags in the boot of a mate’s car, and heads off to the new war in Bosnia. He has no affiliation with a news agency, little money and some sketchy press papers – little justification and no safety net, but he goes – because he has to. heroin addiction. This is where ''My War Gone By, I Miss It So'' gets into real trouble, floundering frequently into incoherence, into posturing both maudlin and macho, into dismal swamps of stoned mixed Parlando la lingua, iniziata a studiare prima di lasciare Londra, vivendo il più possibile con e in mezzo ai locali, invece di rinchiudersi nelle enclave giornalistiche. La guerra è come il consumo di droghe pesanti, è uno sballo di sentimenti contraddittori, agonia ed estasi che ti trascinano…

Bloodshed - The New York Times Web Archive Hooked on Bloodshed - The New York Times Web Archive

Loyd also weaves in anecdotes from his personal life, mostly having to do with his struggle with heroin, which becomes his coping mechanism after witnessing some truly disturbing stuff. I don’t mind these sections, since they offer not only a change of pace from the war (albeit only a slightly less depressing one—I don’t recommend reading this book before bed), but also a glimpse into the mind of a person that would voluntarily put their body and mind in harm’s way. Loyd] has given us a dazzling, hallucinogenic, harrowing and utterly riveting book. . . . Loyd manages to get on the inside and look out, and so provides a perspective on hatred, cruelty and human depravity that is sobering and terrifying. . . . My War Gone By, I Miss It So is strong stuff and certainly not for everyone. But there are touches of brilliance here, and readers who do stomach their way through it—and once started it is almost impossible not to—will be touched and, yes, even enriched for the experience.”—Lawrence Goldstone, The Hartford Courant The local community was predictably close-knit under the circumstances and of such mixed religious definition as to deny you the possibility of making any judgement as to who—Serb, Muslim or Croat—made up the predominant group. At this stage of the war there were still up to 60,000 Serbs living in Sarajevo, a little under a quarter of the total population that remained. Some had joined the government army and fought bravely alongside their Muslim neighbours against what they saw as the forces of nationalist aggression that threatened their beloved city; others, including Petar, remained because they did not want to leave their homes and hoped the war would end soon; a lesser number actively sympathized with the men who shelled the city but were trapped in their houses by the gelling of the front lines that had encircled the capital.The stark, often lyrical quality of his prose accentuates the surreal atmosphere of wartime in Bosnia. . . . Loyd’s account blends personal revelation with biting commentary on diplomacy and war. By turns horrifying, contemplative, and savagely funny, this memoir captures the peculiar ferocity of ethnic and religious civil strife. . . . This unforgettable work ranks with the great modern accounts of war.”—James Holmes, Library Journal

My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd - Publishers Weekly My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd - Publishers Weekly

Robert Kaplan’s 1993 book Balkan Ghosts is still used today by policymakers trying to navigate this troubled region, and he saw what was coming. “My visit to Yugoslavia was eerie precisely because everyone I spoke with—locals and foreign diplomats alike—was already resigned to big violence ahead. Yugoslavia did not deteriorate suddenly, but gradually and methodically, step by step, through the 1980s, becoming poorer and meaner and more hate-filled by the year.” He also wrote that “Macedonia was like the chaos at the beginning of time,” but the comment could have been applied to much of the Balkans. The war began when Croatia declared its independence from Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia, and when My War Gone By opens the fighting has already been going on for a year. Undoubtedly the most powerful and immediate book to emerge from the Balkan horror of ethnic civil war . . . far more revealing and convincing than anything recounted to camera by visiting journalists and politicians’ Anthony Beevor, Daily TelegraphThis is a relatively interesting and disturbing account of one man's experience reporting on the Bosnian war. I'm sure there are much better and more comprehensive accounts of this war out there, so I wouldn't choose this one out of a lineup. Our discussions around the stove were a forum for arguments from every strand of the spectrum and frequently became hot-tempered affairs of raised voices and wild gesticulations. At this time I had no real foundation for an opinion of my own concerning the war. Of course it was obvious that the city was suffering, and that terrible deeds were being committed elsewhere in Bosnia. Yet my impressions of the conflict prior to my arrival had been moulded by Mima’s tutoring and in general she blamed all sides equally. So in debates I acted as a kind of muted umpire. Angrier exchanges were often halted as if to protect my sensibilities, bestowing me somehow with a passifying role. I listened with interest to what I heard. Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL7352732M Openlibrary_edition This is definitely not a book for everybody, but it did satisfy my goal of filling a hole in my historical knowledge, one I’m sure many others have. The lessons learned are important, though sadly not unique. That this happened in my lifetime is sobering evidence that it can easily happen again. Hopefully, with more books like this, that chance will diminish. A quel punto tenta l’avventura col fotogiornalismo, e all’inizio è piuttosto spaesato, ma possiede comunque un approccio alla guerra che è pressoché unico, un modo di sentirla viverla e parteciparla che lo fa presto emergere tra gli altri reporter:

My War Gone By, I Miss It So - drew scanlon dot com Book Review: My War Gone By, I Miss It So - drew scanlon dot com

Well I found this book on one of my thrift store hunts,Being that I've not read much about the war after Yugoslavia broke up I was interested.I don't think that I was prepared for the raw visual observations of the author,The brutality of the war all sides concerned was very honestly detailed.The human suffering cannot be imagined.The physical toll on the parties involved is beyond measure let alone the mental toll, even on the journalist's. This is merely one example of the horrific cruelty and irrational hatreds created by the conflict between a desire to have an ethnically pure nationalistic country and those who desired a secular multi-ethnic society. Of course, nothing can be that simple, and one wonders if the thugs hadn’t taken control. Horrors abound as humans are turned into weapons. Loyd witnessed one particularly wanton and cruel act as groups of Serbian soldiers bound the arms of some Croatian prisoners and then taped Claymore mines to their bodies connected by wires to their own lines. They forced the prisoners to walk toward the enemy lines, assuming the prisoners would not be fired upon. The inevitable end left only minor pieces scattered around and parts of legs.He became so fond of one murderous Croatian militia leader that in a story he filed about the killer's flight from the region, he now confides, he changed the man's destination from Australia to Brazil, not wanting them: ''Love hate, war peace, life death, crime and justice: to say my mind was stretched by trying to figure it all out would be an understatement.'' You could have a good time in Stara Bila that summer, providing you had not been born in the place. Congregated there were every type and nationality of journalist, photographer, cameraman (...). The fighting spilled further into the hills around us; they glowed with burning villages at night, and echoed with firefights by day. We sometimes watched it over barbecues. At dusk, we would choose our company, load up on whatever was going, and party to excess. We would fade out what the war meant to us and turn up the volume on the generator-run sound system." Mass graves were all over, hidden in the forests, and relatives would search for bodies of missing kin. The bodies had been looted and ID cards were scattered all over; sometimes the faces were almost unrecognizable as war changed them. “It’s not what people lost; it’s what they gained.” Evil , Loyd notes, makes an indelible impression on the eyes. A testament to his honor and courage . . . [this] book shines with small truths and larger, philosophical ones about life and war.”— New York Post

My War Gone By, I Miss It So Quotes - Goodreads My War Gone By, I Miss It So Quotes - Goodreads

This is a book about dark motivations and self-destruction, and (considering the effects of the great cruelty that marked this conflict) what draws people to such hatred, either to watch or to take part. . . . My War Gone By is a raw and ragged book for a war that officially announced to the world that what’s old is new in conflict: war fought between neighbors divided by religion or ethnicity, and fought hand to hand. . . . Bringing a war often seen through a haze of euphemism into sharp and jarring focus. This great horror in a century of horrors finally has it jeremiad.”—Justin D. Coffin, The Philadelphia InquirerHave you ever had a book hit you like a hammer blow to your head and your gut at the same time? That's what Loyd's writing did to me. Ricocheting between wartime and peace, jarring you out of your stupor with no preparation when he describes the horrors of war to begin a chapter, dragging you down with him as he sinks into his addiction to heroin - all this and more made for a haunting, unbelievable read. Poi in Cecenia, anche a Grozny, dove i cadaveri abbandonati diventano punti di riferimento stradale: It wasn't until I discovered this war memoir that I found out how little I knew of that period, how much I needed to learn about it and how erroneous my convictions were as to who was who, who did what and why Bosnia turned into the worst inferno Europe had witnessed since WW2. Knjiga dubokotraumatiziranog pojedinca iz Britanije koji zbog teškog obiteljskog nasljeđa (ratovi), odnos-neodnos s ocem, je posjetio Bosnu i Hercegovinu za vrijeme rata 90tih. Jer je njemu to trebalo.