Reading the book is as close to a metaphysical travel experience a reader can have., Her powers of descriptive observation are magical. Yet West’s book is so good that it can transport the reader to a place in time through her writing she makes seem eternal. Ethnic nationalism caused internecine conflict which resulted in vile atrocities being committed by Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, Macedonians, and Montenegrins. And various ethnic groups had their way with each other. The fascist German, Italian and Hungarian regimes all had their bestial ways with the land and its people. The Yugoslavs that accompany West in the book would become collateral damage in a multisided war that spared no one. Imagination & Interpretation – Black Lamb & Grey Falconīlack Lamb and Grey Falcon was published in 1941, the same year that the German Army invaded Yugoslavia. West ominously alludes to this in her dedication: “To my friends in Yugoslavia, who are all now dead or enslaved.” She records for posterity a world that was to vanish into darkness a few years later. It was a very important moment in Balkan history, one that West catalogs with erudition, wit, and scintillating descriptions. West traveled with her husband for six weeks Yugoslavia in 1937 at a time when the prospect of war loomed ever larger. An inveterate reader would need several weeks at the seaside in Dalmatia to get through the book. The print on those pages is not very big either. My dog eared copy which always sits close at hand has 1,171 pages. Size wise, the book is a doorstop, a free weight, a tome. Go into any bookshop in Dubrovnik selling English language titles and it is almost impossible not to run across a copy of Rebecca West’s magisterial travel opus, “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia.” One of the most recognizable aspects of the books is its girth.

Black lamb and gray falcon