Volume 47, Number 1 · January 20, 2000
Anatomy of a Murderer
By Charles Simic
Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant
by Dusko Doder, by Louise Branson
Free Press, 304 pp., $25.00
Two types of explanation are regularly put forward concerning Slobodan Milosevic and the many misdeeds associated with his name. The first regards him as a man who is solely responsible for everything that occurred in the wars of Yugoslav secession and whose removal would return Serbia to sanity. The other contends that Serbs are a tribe of fanatic nationalists with a long history of violence against their neighbors and that his removal would not mean very much since someone equally rotten or far worse would immediately take his place. In their new biography of Milosevic, Dusko Doder and Louise Branson offer both of these explanations at different times, leaving it unclear how much weight the reader is to give one or the other. While they often suggest that Serbs have an insular, self-righteous, and delusional view of history, they also, as good journalists, tell a more complicated tale whose various implications and contradictions the authors do not seem to understand fully.
Review, 4740 words
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