Lead Review (Shadowplay)

• Book: Shadowplay
• Location: Balkans
• Author: Tim Marshall

Review Author: tripfiction

Reporting for Sky News, Tim Marshall, was heavily involved in bringing news of the war to our screens. He says about reporting on the disintegration of Yugoslavia: “It was the first time I really started to understand the nature of war and conflict”, shattering his naïve belief that war in Europe was over…

I personally followed some of the reporting of the war but never fully understood the nuances and ramifications and I am grateful to the author for offering an insightful, thoughtful and engaging account of his time following the permutations of this terrible war.

He talks to people as a follows the progress of the war in this narrative divided into Before / During / After. It is a very immediate narrative, with some humour to lighten the overall darkness of the time, but doesn’t really examine the period prior to the outbreak of war – which would have helped really set the book in a full text. The book is instructive but in no way didactic.

By January 1992, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ceased to exist, as it separated into the individual component countries. This is a book that makes this conflict understandable through the words and the personal take offered.

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