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A Paper House: The Ending of Yugoslavia
Book by MARK THOMPSON
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
356 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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156 people want to read
About the author
Mark Thompson
6 books27 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
Mark Thompson is an award winning British historian. He has written three books including The White War (2008), an account of the travesties of the Italian army on the Austrian front during World War I, which discussed restoring the Roman practice of decimation, the random execution of troops in order to enforce the discipline of the remaining troops. Forging War (1999) is an account of the media manipulation that took place during the Bosnian War. A Paper House (1992) describes the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Thompson has also edited, with Louis Mackay, Something in the Wind: Politics after Chernobyl (1998).
In 2009 he was the winner of the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for The White War: Life & Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919.
Mark Thompson is an award winning British historian. He has written three books including The White War (2008), an account of the travesties of the Italian army on the Austrian front during World War I, which discussed restoring the Roman practice of decimation, the random execution of troops in order to enforce the discipline of the remaining troops. Forging War (1999) is an account of the media manipulation that took place during the Bosnian War. A Paper House (1992) describes the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Thompson has also edited, with Louis Mackay, Something in the Wind: Politics after Chernobyl (1998).
In 2009 he was the winner of the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for The White War: Life & Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 26, 2022
Written just after the Slovenian spring, while the Yugoslav republics were on the verge of full-blown war, A Paper House is Mark Thompson’s journey throughout the region, using the people he meets and the cities he visits as a springboard to discuss its history
Though structured like a travellogue, and presented as an account of Yugoslavia’s dissolution, this book is mostly a cultural and political history of those peoples living in its final days. It constantly jumps back and forth between past and present, between politics, travel stories, geography, and art. The scope is ambitious and dizzying. It is also uneven, with almost nothing on Macedonia (for instance) and heaps on Slovenia (the country Thompson is most familiar with). Normally, I’d say this couldn’t work, but in Yugoslavia’s case, the format captures the patchwork of peoples and their confusing, overlapping, shifting boundaries of identity and disavowal, war and peace, oppressor and oppressed.
Thompson has both a journalistic and a literary background. He worked for Mladina magazine in Slovenia, and was also a translator and historian of Slavic and Italian literature (including a noteworthy biography of Danilo Kiš). His way of telling history therefore has a very distinct emphasis on the art and literature of each place.
This was a fascinating way to compare national outlooks. The forlorn Slovenes, long Habsburg subjects, internalised their deference to western, German, enlightenment ideals. They developed an intellectual culture that saw itself as insufficient, and therefore in need of development.
By contrast, the Serbs raised their own folklore—particularly that surrounding the 1389 Battle of Kosovo—to the level of mythology. Their poets were the nation’s slumbering heartbeat during centuries of Ottoman rule. They mystified the promise that Serbia would one day reclaim the glory of its medieval empire, connecting this eventual recrudescence to the very existence of the nation-state.
My favourite chapter in this book was about the Istran peninsula (called Istria in Italian). For centuries, Istra was divided between an urban Italian coastline and a rural Slavic hinterland. The emergence of nationalism and borders changed the situation. After the World Wars, many of the region’s Italians were expelled—by force or otherwise.
Thompson shines a light on this period of history through his discussions with Ligio Zanini, fisherman and writer. Zanini’s mother-tongue was Rovignese, a tiny Romance language distantly related to Italian, with only a few hundred speakers. His magnum opus, Martin Muma, written in both Italian and Rovignese, paints the uncertainties of those Italians living in the Istran peninsula at the end of World War II:
After its expulsion from the Cominform in 1948, Yugoslavia embarked on a new wave of purges against its political enemies, real or imagined. Italians—even those who, like Zanini, had willingly submitted to the new Yugoslav state—came under suspicion.
For renouncing his party membership, Zanini spent several years toiling on Yugoslavia’s worst gulag, the barren island of Goli Otok. But on his release, unlike the thousands of other Italians who fled the peninsula, including the titular Martin Muma, Zanini chose to stay in the only place he had ever called home:
Mark Thompson has a brilliant eye for the poetry in Zanini’s tale: the powerful sense of place and home (oikophilia); the fragility of belonging to a marginal culture in uncertain times; and the animating zeal of political ideals, the belief that the world can be changed for the better, even as corruption and failure corrode its reality. All of this constitutes the tragic history of Yugoslavia.
A lot has happened since 1992, when A Paper House was first published. As a primer on the region’s political situation, it is somewhat dated. But as a cultural history, it is still extremely valuable. And as literature—as pure delight—it is a product of obvious care for and attention to the lands and peoples of Yugoslavia.
Read this review and others on my blog.
Though structured like a travellogue, and presented as an account of Yugoslavia’s dissolution, this book is mostly a cultural and political history of those peoples living in its final days. It constantly jumps back and forth between past and present, between politics, travel stories, geography, and art. The scope is ambitious and dizzying. It is also uneven, with almost nothing on Macedonia (for instance) and heaps on Slovenia (the country Thompson is most familiar with). Normally, I’d say this couldn’t work, but in Yugoslavia’s case, the format captures the patchwork of peoples and their confusing, overlapping, shifting boundaries of identity and disavowal, war and peace, oppressor and oppressed.
Thompson has both a journalistic and a literary background. He worked for Mladina magazine in Slovenia, and was also a translator and historian of Slavic and Italian literature (including a noteworthy biography of Danilo Kiš). His way of telling history therefore has a very distinct emphasis on the art and literature of each place.
This was a fascinating way to compare national outlooks. The forlorn Slovenes, long Habsburg subjects, internalised their deference to western, German, enlightenment ideals. They developed an intellectual culture that saw itself as insufficient, and therefore in need of development.
By contrast, the Serbs raised their own folklore—particularly that surrounding the 1389 Battle of Kosovo—to the level of mythology. Their poets were the nation’s slumbering heartbeat during centuries of Ottoman rule. They mystified the promise that Serbia would one day reclaim the glory of its medieval empire, connecting this eventual recrudescence to the very existence of the nation-state.
My favourite chapter in this book was about the Istran peninsula (called Istria in Italian). For centuries, Istra was divided between an urban Italian coastline and a rural Slavic hinterland. The emergence of nationalism and borders changed the situation. After the World Wars, many of the region’s Italians were expelled—by force or otherwise.
Thompson shines a light on this period of history through his discussions with Ligio Zanini, fisherman and writer. Zanini’s mother-tongue was Rovignese, a tiny Romance language distantly related to Italian, with only a few hundred speakers. His magnum opus, Martin Muma, written in both Italian and Rovignese, paints the uncertainties of those Italians living in the Istran peninsula at the end of World War II:
We Italian comrades were fighting for a socialist Italy on one side and a socialist Yugoslavia on the other. Then it wouldn’t matter where they put the border around Istria. (68)
After its expulsion from the Cominform in 1948, Yugoslavia embarked on a new wave of purges against its political enemies, real or imagined. Italians—even those who, like Zanini, had willingly submitted to the new Yugoslav state—came under suspicion.
For renouncing his party membership, Zanini spent several years toiling on Yugoslavia’s worst gulag, the barren island of Goli Otok. But on his release, unlike the thousands of other Italians who fled the peninsula, including the titular Martin Muma, Zanini chose to stay in the only place he had ever called home:
The illusion that anyone possesses territory is so damaging. What matters is to walk lightly on this earth. Bickering about whose culture is better than whose: what nonsense! . . . Culture belongs to everyone. From slave songs came spirituals and the blues, which are played now in the same theatres where Verdi is performed. Think of it! Even those wretched and despairing people brought their little flower to the house of culture. . . (70)
Mark Thompson has a brilliant eye for the poetry in Zanini’s tale: the powerful sense of place and home (oikophilia); the fragility of belonging to a marginal culture in uncertain times; and the animating zeal of political ideals, the belief that the world can be changed for the better, even as corruption and failure corrode its reality. All of this constitutes the tragic history of Yugoslavia.
A lot has happened since 1992, when A Paper House was first published. As a primer on the region’s political situation, it is somewhat dated. But as a cultural history, it is still extremely valuable. And as literature—as pure delight—it is a product of obvious care for and attention to the lands and peoples of Yugoslavia.
Read this review and others on my blog.
February 3, 2016
I want to be more generous. It's worth 3.5 but in the end I enjoyed it. So 4 it is.
A more journalistic and drier account of a journey through the Yugolsavian federation and its various states than the fabulous 'The Impossible Country' by Brian Hall (which I strongly reccommend).
It's an amazing source of very interesting histrical notes on each country specially if considering the book's briefness. It takes a century to recounter the whole history of that region and probably a day to destroy it.
The book did not start off on the right foot in my opinion. The initial chapters are permeated by slightly biased assumptions and a few historical annecdotes taken as bible for everything that a country or its poeple have become. But by the end it did manage to lift itself up by being more open to doubts and re-considerations, or maybe it's just the fact that it reads more like a book than an aseptic academic analisys.
The best part for me was the chapter about the Vojvodina region. I'll admit - hardly ever come accorss even while reading tens of books about Yugolsavia. I just want to visit it now. It's so intriguing. Its history, poeple, towns, landscape etc that are now in my head thanks to this book crave to be seen, heard, photographed and remembered.
A more journalistic and drier account of a journey through the Yugolsavian federation and its various states than the fabulous 'The Impossible Country' by Brian Hall (which I strongly reccommend).
It's an amazing source of very interesting histrical notes on each country specially if considering the book's briefness. It takes a century to recounter the whole history of that region and probably a day to destroy it.
The book did not start off on the right foot in my opinion. The initial chapters are permeated by slightly biased assumptions and a few historical annecdotes taken as bible for everything that a country or its poeple have become. But by the end it did manage to lift itself up by being more open to doubts and re-considerations, or maybe it's just the fact that it reads more like a book than an aseptic academic analisys.
The best part for me was the chapter about the Vojvodina region. I'll admit - hardly ever come accorss even while reading tens of books about Yugolsavia. I just want to visit it now. It's so intriguing. Its history, poeple, towns, landscape etc that are now in my head thanks to this book crave to be seen, heard, photographed and remembered.
March 31, 2013
This was one of the better books I read about the break-up of Yugoslavia, ranking with Misha Glenny's work in quality and knowledgeability. The only reason not to read this book is that it is dated.
Mark Thompson, the author, is an historian, not to be confused with the journalist of the same name.
Mark Thompson, the author, is an historian, not to be confused with the journalist of the same name.
February 10, 2021
A contemporary travelogue that uses history to explore the issues that unravelled Yugoslavia. It’s a great read which uses politicians and ministers, as well as people Thompson meets on buses and walking the streets as vehicles for his writing. It highlights the complex cultural and nationalist issues within the republics which were at odds with one another (I.e. serb and croats). These peoples had been at the heel of empires for centuries, which when fell, were held together by communism papering over the cracks - which was ultimately heading for collapse.
An interesting approach, but is somewhat now dated and definitely not helpful for a first read in Yugoslavia or the Balkans
An interesting approach, but is somewhat now dated and definitely not helpful for a first read in Yugoslavia or the Balkans
February 9, 2018
A combo telling of the breakup of Yugoslavia through 1992 and travelogue with the author’s viewpoint on issues and the future liberally thrown in. Gives One a good background along with Glenna’s book as to the history of the Balkans.
June 29, 2007
This book made me want to read more books about Yugoslavia...which I haven't done yet. However, when I hear news about Bosnia or Montenegro, I no longer feel like an idiot. Tito...well, I can't really go into Tito. Read it.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews