Anthropology, Department of
Date of this Version
2021
Citation
Nebraska Anthropologist , Volume 29: 2021, pp 67-69
Abstract
The Balkan War is regarded as a very dark period in world history, with death, torture, destruction, and displacement all being methods used to perpetuate violence against multiple groups of people in the area. The Investigator: Demons of the Balkan War by Vladimír Dzuro (hereafter referred to as The Investigator) is a chilling personal account of criminal investigations of the perpetrators of the war that broke out in the former Yugoslavia. Dzuro, initially an employee of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) and later the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), addresses the many horrors of this war, spanning into fields beyond the adrenaline-rushing investigations, arrests, and trials. He pays homage to those that are not typically in the public eye but whose work he understands he would have had little success in his investigations without, which helps this book to stand out from my perspective as a graduate student studying forensic anthropology. The Investigator, initially published in Czech in 2017, was translated into an English version which was published in 2019. The book is made up of ten main chapters, the first few being arguably the most intense and captivating. Though the author uses informal language to make the reader feel as though they are investigating alongside the author rather than reading about it, Dzuro ensures that adequate history and crucial background information is included all throughout the book to give proper context to the reader.
Comments
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