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The Key to My Neighbor's House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda
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The Key to My Neighbor's House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda
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by Elizabeth Neuffer
Sales Rank : 152648
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Paperback: 528 pages
Publisher: Picador November 9, 2002
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312302827
ISBN-13: 978-0312302825
Product Dimensions:
8.1 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
Product Review
In the wake of genocide, it is probably impossible to achieve anything that approaches justice--and Boston Globe journalist Elizabeth Neuffer knows it. Yet this heartfelt book describes how some of the people in war-torn Rwanda and Bosnia have sought after it anyway, and why the search is so important. The Key to My Neighbor's House is ultimately an anecdotal and impressionistic document, but therein lies its power. It's difficult to forget scenes that begin this way: "Photographs of mass graves can prepare you for what you might see--a jumble of skeletalized limbs, heads, bodies--but nothing prepares you for how it smells." The reportage is marvelous. For instance, Neuffer recounts how prosecutors at a Rwandan tribunal were forced to argue "over whose motion was the most important to be printed out from the scarce paper supply." She also describes the harrowing experience of a Bosnian soldier beginning to grope her--only to discover "the steel plate inside my bulletproof vest." This impressive book will leave a mark on you long after you've set it down. --John Miller
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Boston Globe reporter Neuffer ably, sensitively humanizes two of the worst tragedies of the 1990s. By retelling the atrocities through her on-the-ground interviews, she coaxes readers more deeply into these two ghastly, complex tales. While she interviews victims and perpetrators, Neuffer focuses primarily on the victims and their search for relatives and justice once the violence has subsided. One particularly poignant story concerns Hasan Nuhanovic, a Bosnian Muslim whose family disappeared at the hands of Bosnian Serbs; while searching for them, Nuhanovic learns details of their deaths. Neuffer is honest about the difficulties faced by war crimes tribunals in 1996, the Rwandan tribunal was "an institution in disarray" and "strangled by a huge bureaucracy; riven by political infighting, nepotism, and incompetence"; the Bosnian tribunal, too, the author reports, is far from perfect, but general opinion allows that it's better than no justice at all. But buoyed by the courage of people like Witness JJ, a Rwandan woman whose testimony helped convict an official of complicity in rape, Neuffer is optimistic about the courts' ultimate success. The people she interviewed, though, are less satisfied by the search for justice. This comprehensive study lends an immediacy to these two conflicts and the vicissitudes of the growing movement for international justice. Five maps not seen by PW. Agent, Michael Carlisle. (Nov.)Forecast: American attention has certainly been drawn away from Bosnia and Rwanda, but the questions Neuffer asks about the boundaries between justice and revenge remain highly relevant. Readers concerned with international justice will be drawn to this book.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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