Les femmes et la guerre - Madeleine Gagnon

L'auteur visite plusieurs pays de conflit ou de sociétés oppressives (Macédoine, Bosnie, Israel-Palestine, Pakistan, etc) et fait des entrevues avec surtout des femmes qui racontent leurs vies et leurs difficultés quotidiennes.  Gagnon ajoute aussi ses aperçus, ses commentaires et ses observations.  Sujet intéressant où elle explore des idées difficile telles le rôle des femmes dans ces conflits ethniques, le rôle du silence et de l'interdiction sociale de discussions ouvertes dans toutes formes de violence, soit domestique soit inter-ethnique.  En Bosnie, elles parlent de la violence inhérente dans la structure d'une société, et comment cela peut déborder dans un conflit tel qu'ils ont connu en Bosnie.

Malheureusement, encore une fois, son style pose des difficultés pour moi.  C'est un peu trop flou, trop monologue intérieur, poétique ou il faut clarté et lumière nette.

There's A Mystery There: The Primal Vision of Maurice Sendak - Jonathan Cott

An interesting, if a bit scattered, look at some of the deep psychodramas or psychoanalytical themes running through Sendak's books.  He really does seem to write from some very deep grasp of the traumas and conflicts of childhood, and the struggle to become a separate, adult being and accept the fact.  Rage, abandonment, realizing you are not the centre of the family (or the world), having to be self-reliant, all of these themes run through his book.
An interesting look at a very deep artist.  But it also underlines how many writers and artists spend their whole life writing the same story, circling around the same trauma or issue.  Deep, but a bit narrow in the end.  Something you do if you have to, I guess.

Sarajevo Marlboro - Miljenko Jergovic

A collection of short stories by a Croat writer from Sarajevo.  The short stories all deal with bits of life during the siege, exploring chiefly the state of mind of people living under the siege, but in a round-about, reflected kind of way.   A subtle exploration of the craziness that come with living this experience.  Very low key, almost ironic.  An examination of the normalization of extremes of experience.

A Concise History of Bosnia - Cathie Carmichael

A well-written over view of Bosnian history from the Middle Ages through to the current situation.  The book has an excellent introduction, with an overview of geography and how the people lived - kind of a sociological overview.
The section on the conflict in the 90s provided (for me) just the right amount of detail about key figures and key events.  The book makes it very clear that the Serbs in Bosnia and their territorial ambitions really fuelled the whole conflict.  Carmichael details how the majority of deaths and the majority of displaced people were Muslim.  The majority of atrocities were also committed by the Serbs.
There is also some space devoted to the ridiculous and completely inadequate response of both the UN and the big international players throughout this whole conflict.  Historical stereotypes and myths about the Balkans played a large role in their inaction which allowed the slaughter to go on for so long.
She also explores near the end of the book the dissonance this conflict created, especially for the younger, educated urban people, who socialized in mixed religious groups and who saw themselves primarily as Yugoslav.  She also makes it clear how quickly the peaceful situation in villages and towns shifted, friendly neighbours suddenly on opposite sides, slitting each others throats, burning each others houses and raping each others families.
Carmichael and others are surprised at how current Bosnia still manages to function on a day to day basis when the brutal realities of the 90s still sit just beneath the surface.

Ten Myths about Israel - Ilan Pappé

Another brilliant book by this critic of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.

The book is divided into three sections:  myths about the past and the genesis of the state; myths about current situations and myths about the two state solution.

In the first section, there are some rather shocking bits of information that I was unaware of:
- Zionism began essentially as a European Christian powers projects and initially received little support from Jewish leaders - it was seen as a back door colonialist policy for dealing with the Middle East (which it in fact is)
- in the 30s, the Zionists tried to form an alliance with the Nazis to help them fight the British in the Mandate territories!

In the second section, he clearly outlines how and why the Israeli state is a colonial power and essentially a project of ethnic cleansing, by looking at patterns of land confiscation, abrogation of basic rights, persistent harassment and use of military and extrajudicial punishments.

In the section on Gaza, he also outlines his reasons for seeing the Israeli actions as a form of genocide, based mostly on the number of deaths and the overwhelmingly civilian nature of those deaths.

Throughout the book, Pappé also underlines how elimination of the Palestinian population has always been the goal, and how Israeli governments have never entered into peace negotiations in good faith.

A well-written book - direct and to the point.

And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Yanis Varoufakis

An excellent look at the current crisis situation in the EU.  Varoufakis discusses some complex economic models but he explains them clearly, so it is possible to learn quite a bit about macroeconomics.  The goes over the Bretton Woods agreement, then the financialization structure that took its place after the Nixon Shock (when the US stopped backing European currencies at a fixed rate convertible to gold).  He also traces the history of the EU idea from its earliest stages as a heavy industry cartel centred in France and Germany.  He sees this origin as a corporate cartel as a major shadow hanging over the further development of the EU as primarily a regulatory economic block for large corporate interests - rules based, technocratic and essentially apolitical, asocial and antidemocratic.
He also looks at some of the shady practices of the EU bank in Frankfort leading up to the collapse of Greece and several other smaller EU countries in 2009.  Predatory loan practices similar to the subprime mortgage crisis in the US.  Banks pushing loans to high risk businesses and countries that could never pay them back, and then cutting the loans up to make derivatives of "shared risk" that were then sold to other EU national banks - who of course threatened to collapse when the true value of the derivatives emerged in the 2009 crisis.
He sees the EU technocrats and governing bodies as suffering from dogmatism which keeps them from seeing both the real nature of the economic problems and also the possible solutions which could be enacted (except that they come from outside accepted dogmatic thinking).
The German political and banking elite comes off quite badly in his analysis.
A complex book, worth rereading.

Goodbye Sarajevo - Atka Reid

A very personal story of the siege of Sarajevo and its effect on a family.  Told from two perspectives.  First, the story of the parents, children, and grandparents that remain trapped in Sarajevo for a  good part of the siege.  Second, the story of the three girls who manage to leave, and their life as young refugees in Croatia.  The three girls are all under 20; the youngest is 13 at the beginning.  The story of how they all end up reunited in New Zealand is very touching.  A good personal account - puts a human face on all of this, though through luck, they manage to avoid most of the death and tragedies that touched most families in Sarajevo at that time.