Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History [Paperback]

Quite a few negative reviews I see here were written by natives of the Balkans who think their homelands have been slandered. I note with amusement the American reviewer who pegs them correctly as "tribal" (especially Serbian) types utterly convinced that *they* are the "true" victims of history, profoundly bewildered how any outsider could sympathize at all with their enemies. (Of course, this attitude isn't limited to that part of the world, or even to the poorer parts of the world; Germany has recently been making noises about how it was the "real" victim of WWII.)

Then we have the usual suspects: the politically correct types who decry Kaplan's "racism" or "Eurocentrism" or whatnot, and blame the East's troubles on "colonialism," "imperialism," etc...never on Communism, or local tyrants, or the peasantries only too happy to slaughter Jews and Gypsies. Because, of course, all cultures are equal, and $DEITY forbid anybody pronounce one culture superior to any other!

Inevitably, one such reviewer trots out the old line about how "in 800 A.D., for instance, the Byzantines and Arabs and Chinese were producing great works in art, architecture, and astronomy, while the Europeans were wallowing in feudal primitivism." Well, that's nice, but it's currently 2003 C.E. What have they done lately? We've been hearing that argument about the Islamofascists ad nauseum since September 11th, 2001, and I'm tired of it. What they've done lately is cut out the clitorides of young girls, stone adulteresses, force women into identity-obliterating garments, declare fatwas on "heretics," reprint Nazi literature, blow themselves up in pizzerias full of teenagers, and fly airplanes into skyscrapers.

While one Balkan titled his review, "This book is no longer accurate," I think it's actually become a hell of a lot more relevant to world politics since 9/11. What's past is always prologue, as our 21st-century enemies with their seventh-century mindsets dismayingly prove.

Back in "sophisticated" Europe, the age-old hobby of antisemitic violence has been re-discovered with a passion. While this has been most in evidence in the West (for example, the thugs who seized a young Jewish woman in Paris and carved a Star of David into the flesh of her wrist), I didn't miss this comment from a Romanian reviewer: "[Kaplan's] book is biased because he is Jewish, so he portrays the Jews as great saints while the Romanians are tyrants and unworthy of anyone's attention." The implication, of course, is that Jews victimized Romanians as much as vice versa. Would someone please send me a link to a story in which Jews dragged Romanians to slaughterhouses and strong-armed them onto conveyor belts that ended in sharp blades?

Kaplan may indeed be biased, and I'm giving the book four stars on the presumption that the reviewers pointing out simple factual errors, such as those of spelling and etymology, are correct. But other writers validate much of what Kaplan writes -- such as Andrei Codrescu, of that oh-so-right-wing media outlet NPR, who is a Romanian Jew. There's also a highly engaging P.J. O'Rourke article on Albania in which the tribalism comes off even worse than it does in Kaplan's book.

What one does with the following hyperbole, I leave to others who are more susceptible: "Nazism, for instance, can claim Balkan origins. Among the flophouses of Vienna, a breeding ground of ethnic resentments close to the southern Slavic world, Hitler learned how to hate so infectiously" (p.xxvii).

The book is an homage of some sort to (Dame) Rebecca West's, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. This alone should indicate the tone of this highly stylized portrait cast in broad, impressionistic strokes of a region that, ultimately, does more to occlude understanding than shine any meaningful light.

If you're looking for an easily digestible book on the Balkans, look to Mark Mazower's, The Balkans: A Short History. Or at least read it as a corrective to Kaplan's thriller.

The back of my copy of Kaplan's book (Vintage Departures) describes the book as "History/Travel". Delete "History" and maybe I'd give it another star.