A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism

“In this powerful series of reports from The Hague’s international courtroom, Slavenka Drakulić confronts the Yugoslav war’s grand villains and banal perpetrators as she fearlessly contemplates both the individual character of evil and the tragic, chillingly impersonal mechanisms of war. Writing with her hallmark blend of forthrightness, open-eyed irony, and psychological discernment, Drakulić gives us disturbingly intimate vignettes of war criminals who might have been her own (and our) neighbors, even as she illuminates one of our time’s most daunting and urgent questions: How ordinary men and women turn, and are turned, into genocidal killers. An important and a necessary book.”

—Eva Hoffman, author of Lost in Translation and After Such Knowledge

“In the first in-depth look at the war crimes trials in The Hague, Slavenka Drakulić has written a deeply personal and lucid account. She brings to life the men who destroyed Yugoslavia—mediocre people who committed extraordinary crimes.”

—Laura Silber, coauthor of Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation

“Lucidly written… a devastating book… [Drakulić’s] direct, personal style does justice to the weight and grimness of these stories.”

—The Guardian (London)