The thing I noticed most of all about this book is the strength the author has is creating original and interesting characters - from the main character, who is overly honest, wry and sarchastic yet is deeply affected by the war, to the glue-sniffing former friend who is so out of it that he wants to join the Crotian army because he'll be paid more. I don't think this book could have been written in English-it has the feeling of a translation from Serbian (that's a good thing).

I'm only 17 but do to the recent activities in Yugoslavia, I've been thrown into its path. Arsenijevic is a writer who beautifully entwines comedy and tragedy. You are often laughing and crying because of the ambivalence. If you have been paying attention to the horrors going on in Kosovo right now, you somehow can understand, through reading, how those people fighting to remain normal feel right now. A must read. You'll never put it down.

This is a great book about methaphysical Belgrade during past ten years.

The main character's love of architecture (and, in particular, the houses he owns) and his genuine emotional attachement to them might seem odd at first (such as the fact that he gives classic Serbian women's names to them), but, over time, the message becomes clear. Pekic's take on communism: the fact that we should not give up our possesions to share with others, whether they be our human relationships, or, as in this case, material things. To add to this thought provoking theme, the book is also a nicely done chronicle of this century's history of one of the major Balkan cities (Belgrade) ; it is a story often overshadowed by Holocaust memoirs and the like. All in all, this book was a provoking , and , above all, very entertaining (due to its irony) read.

I picked "Houses" up on a remainder shelf in a bricks-and-mortar bookstore. The story is set around certain historical events in Belgrade: student riots in 1968; Germany's attack in 1941; and Serbia's entry into World War One. Horrible to admit in a review, I am sure, but I did not fully understand the references in the book.

Pekic tells the story in the first-person; the character is a landlord of several houses in the city. Arsenie Negovan is losing his sanity. What better character to relate the tale of a city half-heartedly embracing communism: a landlord, losing his mind, recalling his houses when they were young, lamenting their loss. Here is a sample: "For just as people who have done nothing at all wrong are got rid of simply because they stand in the way of something, so houses too are destroyed because they impede somebody's view, stand in the way of some future square, hamper the development of a street, or traffic, or of some new building." Again, on being a landlord and a man of commerce, "...the very act of possession would be so completely reciprocal that sometime, perhaps in some perfect world, it would become one with the act of self-perception."

With this ironic tone, the deranged voice of a once decent man of property, the history of human struggle in the city unfolds. Buildings are talked about as beings. People are inanimate. Yet human action transforms the place. The loss of the old city is tragic. The grand old houses decay. Present buildings are inferior to their predecessors-- a succinct way to measure the progress of a society. Within this narrative about property and architecture, Arsenie explains his motives, wonders about his soul, and spouts what he has learned during a lifetime of accumulation.

The book was exactly what I was looking for when I plucked it off the remainder shelf: a new direction in my reading. I will look for others in the series, and I recommend "Houses" to readers looking for something different. (My apologies to more knowledgable readers of Pekic.) I will be reading other titles in the "Writings from an Unbound Europe" series.

In his book "Houses of Belgrade (the original serbian title "A Pilgrim of Arsenije Njegovan"), continues his masteful work on the history of family Njegovan. Through the history of one typical serbian family Pekic depicts the last two centuries of Serbian (+ Balkan + East Europian) history. His previous 7-volume work "Golden Fleece" (Zlatno Runo) illustrates the historical events in that part of the world from 1848 through 1941. This book presents a logical continuation of events from 1945 through 1968. Through the story about Arsenije Njegovan, one of the last descendant of one-time rich and powerful family Njegovan, Pekic depict historical events that took place after the arrival of communism in Serbia.
Borislav Pekic, one of the most prolific serbian authors after the World War II, and more importantly, the greatest serbian intellectual in that period, uses his unsurpassed observation skills, sharp cinicism and self sarcasm to both critice and explain the unfortunate turn of events that placed Serbia in the jaws of communism. This book as well as the whole Pekic's opus had an decisive impact on the generations of Serbs. Furthermore, his opus is a must for all people interested in the history and national mentality of Serbs.

This book is an English translation of "Ajmo, ajde, svi u setnju," which was released before six months had passed from the end of the 1996-1997 demonstrations. A group of the most distinguished social scientists in Belgrade, together with their students, researched the student and political protests of the winter as they were happening, providing in short order a work that is both a rigorous analysis and a contemporaneous document of the protests. It is essential material for anybody who wants to understand who were the participants in the longest continuous political protest, and what they believed.

This story is not much different from similar diaries andaccounts I have read about other peoples pacifist accounts inconflicts such as in Korea, Indo-China and Lebanon. The same pacifistattitudes and vibes filter through. Reading Tim Judah's (a prolificwriter of anti-Serb texts) introduction was enough for me to knowwhere this book was heading.

This is the best of the Belgrade Internet diaries, by a Serbian feminist and peace activist who was at Belgrade ground zero during this very interesting and very unfortunate conflict.

Until I happened on this book, I didn't know that I was interested in what it was like to be a Serb while NATO was bombing Serbia (and Milosevic's troops were slaughtering Albanians in Kosovo). As much as Tesanovic despised what Milosovich and other Serbian nationalists were doing (in her name), she was also outraged by the casual acceptance of "collateral damage," that is, the destruction of civilian targets (including one that counted: the PRC embassy in Belgrade) and killing of civilians by carefully targeted NATO (US) bombs.

Tesanovic uses "idiot" in an ancient Greek sense, as meaning a common personwho cannot be trusted to make public decisions: "I am unable to make judgements. I see no options I can identiy with.... All the political options sound aggressive, stupid or far-fetched compared to my simple needs" as a mother. "I don't feel safe here, or happy, or free. I'm a refugee in my own city." Belgrade is/was a city with refugees from the "ethnic cleansing" of Croatia, even as Serbs engaged in "cleansing" of Serbia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. The Serbian nationalists considered Tesanovic a traitor; she considered them dangerously deluded and criminal. "In my country," she wrote, "uniforms always take away the power of speech from citizens, because uinforms carry guns, and citizens carry fear, so there is a permanent civil war going on between uniforms and civilians.

Although she defended foreign intervention again national barbarism, she was far from enthusiastic about the sanctimoniousness of the forces of civilization.Her despairing analyses of those in Serbian and in UN uniforms are acute, but what is most fascinating about the book is the detail about everyday life: a female cousin dying of AIDS, other women deciding to have abortion from concern with the toxins they have been exposed to from bombed buildings, the children with no school getting bored and ever more unmanageable in the dark, intermitent electricity, visits from friends whose water supply has been cut off.

Something more of a diary or a long letter home than I had expected. The author visits people and recounts their conversations, many of which remind us how mis-understood the poor Serbs really are.

I read the book just after it was published and missed an opportunity to speak with the author at an appearance she made in Chicago. My only criticism is that the questions the author poses about the Serbian people and their situation during the war are never answered. I was waiting for some insight about the situation and some perspectives on solutions to the political problems in Belgrade. Nothing was answered or ever raised. We simply get a diary of small vignettes. If she really did meet all those people, I'm surprised that the author didn't have an answer to the question she posed about the Serbian people and their mindset. I sent her a note inviting her to research some of the writings by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich, a Serbian Bishop, and survivor of the Holocaust. His take on the Serbian people, their faith and their tenacity would have explained everything to her. "The Serbs will choose the difficult road because it is the right one, the Christian one."

I would've titled this "A Peek into Serbia" but Levinsohn's description of life in Belgrade v. the rest of more rural Serbia was a surprise to me, as was much of the material in this book. A flowing descripteur, Levinsohn transports us to the dusty but beautiful capital of the former Yugoslavia, and allows tainted Western minds to experience the life of a passionate country and culture, one quite unlike any Americans have ever experienced on paper. The politics of the novel can get complicated, especially since the book is nearing ten years old, and the speculations as to whether or not Milosevic will go to trial in the Hague are tedious to readers, since he has already been there several months. In any case, this book was terrific, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to better understand the mentality of Serbians. Her view of Serbs as "victims with a certain victim mentality" was quite refreshing when splashed against the Western view of Serbs as the guilty party of the war in Yugoslavia and it's casualties. The most appreciated part of this book was Levinsohn's desire to get to the heart of the split of Yugoslavia, and to try to lift some of the intense blame placed on Serbians. In my eyes, she has shed some light onto the matter, more than I can say CNN ever did.

This book scores big points with me, as it has a lot of interesing reading & great pictures. On the other hand, it sports a couple of glaring errors in the writing which undermines one's confidence in the rest of the book. The author who covers the chapter on the F-14 Tomcat for example, seems to have made up the section on deployment. In big, bold letters at the beginning of the chapter, and again on a table of squadrons, he announces that all but eight F-14 squadrons have been decommissioned. A quick check with the Navy (I highly recommend their web site) confirms that no less than 13 squadrons presently exist. Is this a "nitpicky" detail? Possibly, but the people who publish these books are supposedly aviation experts....I'm glad they're not writing medical references... Creative writing notwithstanding, this is still an interesting book.

This volume is a good mix of detailed history and other information on USAF fighter and attack aircraft of the 1960s thorugh 1980s (A-10, F-15, F-16, F-18, etc.) along with some rather sketchy data on late-model Soviet craft and stealth craft. The photos of the Soviet craft are particularly disappointing; most of them look like long-range surveillance photos shot in the Soviet era rather than the clear views seen at major air shows in the last decade.

As a definitive reference it falls short, but as an enjoyable read for buffs, it's a good value. I bought a copy for an aviation-obsessed nephew, and he's mad about it. Owners of more complete and detailed libraries might be more subdued in their enthusiasm.

I am not an entirely experienced Aviation reader, so for a starter reference for buffs, this is a great book. It is very detailed and goes well in-depth on the American warplanes. While some better coverage of foreign warplanes would be nice, I am personally most enthralled by American warplanes, so it's fine. A great coffee table book, great for anyone who wants to be able to learn about their favorite jet well enough to talk about it, but not too detailed to be cryptic.