Beyond the Mountains of the Damned: The War Inside Kosovo

by Matthew McAllester

Book Overview

Winner, Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2002, Non-Fiction

The story of Pec--Kosovo's most destroyed city during the wars in Serbia

For every survivor of a crime, there is a criminal who forces his way into the victim's thoughts long after the act has been committed.

Reporters weren't allowed into Kosovo during the war without the permission of the Yugoslavian government but Matthew McAllester went anyway...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814756603
• ISBN13: 9780814756607
• Release Date: December 2001
• Publisher: New York University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

chilling, gripping

I followed the war in Kosovo by reading about it in the newspapers. Then, like the bulk of Americans, pretty much forgot about it once it was over. But thanks to McAllester's exquisite, journalistic eye for detail, I feel as if I was actually there, a witness somehow to the atrocities that took place. I have never had a particular interest in, or understanding of, the Balkans. Now after reading Beyong the Mountains of the Damned I hunger to know as much as possible. This is no ordinary historical account. It is compelling and it stays with you after you are done. It reads with the breeze of fiction. What is petrifying, however, is that the characters are real and so are their stories. Chapter 12, The Killing, may be the most powerful chapter I've ever read in any book of this kind. While reading alone, I gasped and cried out loud. I highly recommend this book to anyone with a particular interest in Kosovo and Serbia. But it is not only for those with a specialized interest in the region. It is for anyone who appreciates good writing and courageous reporting.

Solid Journalistic Account

"Beyond the MOuntains of the Damned" is a journalistic account of the 1999 war in Kosovo told through both the eyes of journalist Matthew McAllester as well as several of the victims. The senseless brutality wrought upon the Muslim majority by the Serbs is well chronicled. The Kosovo "ethnic clensing" effort lacked the systemic nature of the Nazi genocide or even the occasional grand scale of some of the atrocities committed in Bosnia, but it was no less horrific. Albnaians had their homes burned and their villiages destroyed and many were shot as the Serbs attempted to drive them out.Most of the action in the book takes place in and around the city of Pec, in eastern Kosovo. It was among the hardest hit regions in the territory. McAllester spent the three month war infiltrating Kosovo around in this region, though he never made to Pec until after the war because he would certainly have been killed by the Serbs. Meanwhile in Pec, an ALbanian butcher named Isa Bala and his family tried to stay inconspicuous and wait out the killing. Thier fate ultimately gives this story its gravity.The only knock against the book is that for the most part it lacks a broader perspective. The political events surrounding the war and the history that led to Kosovo's destruction get some mention, but not enough for the avearge reader. Also, the larger war outside the Pec region gets only superficial coverage. Nevertheless, this is still a disturbing account of modern genocide and of the banality of man's evil.