While Barcelona celebrated its Olympic Games, a few kilometers away, tens of thousands of people suffered through war. The book Radio Sarajevo, by Tijan Sila (Angle Editorial), transports the reader to the harshness of those events through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy.
The author recounts his experience in Sarajevo, devastated by the siege, navigating dangerous streets purely for survival. Hunger, illness, and desolation were constant, with cold and violence as daily companions. The text describes the feeling of living in a "dark forest where death stalked you like a hunter," an intuition of horror he would only understand years later.
“"Everyone wanted the old Yugoslavia back: it was an ugly, gray country full of flaws, but at least you weren't being bombed. After all, it's better to live sunk in the mud than to die consumed by flames."
Sila offers a human and literary lesson, describing hell without raising his voice. The book emphasizes that "wars never end," echoing historical repetitions and the consolidation of power, a parallel also evoked by Siri Hustvedt in Ghost Stories. The final call is to not lose memory and to mobilize against barbarism.
