What is war like without jingoism or a distorting ideological lens or patriotic glorification? Madness Visible: A Memoir of War by Janine di Giovanni is one of the most honest accounts of war and its costs I have encountered.
The author recounts her experiences in the Balkans in the 1990s and early 2000s, and is exposed to the extreme limits of the utter barbarism our species is fully capable of achieving. Her book is the closest to war one can experience on a page.
This is also an achievement of pure journalism. Certainly, di Giovanni did not have report in the Balkans as it disintegrated into war, death, ethnic cleansing, systematic rape, forced expulsions and genocide. The people around her in Kosovo and Sarajevo had no choice but to be in the war. But she went as a professional calling and duty, detailing crimes that we always say should no longer happen, but ultimately, and sadly, are replicated.
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