Between Mountains

by Maggie Helwig

Maggie Helwig's stunning British debut is an extraordinary war novel, a poignant and gripping story about the ripples that carry on long after the fighting is over, and about two people kept apart by history, ethics and human frailty.Daniel is a war correspondent in Bosnia, a loner and a truthteller, up to a point, careless with everything except his sources. Lili is an interpreter, based in Paris, careful and meticulous. But when she finds herself working for the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, fails to declare her fragile relationship with Daniel.Between Mountains is a compelling novel of immediacy and power, about love and language, truth and lies, war crimes and the weight of history - with a vividly evoked and frighteningly real supporting cast of war criminals, lawyers, refugees and journalists.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Maggie Helwig (born 1961) is a Canadian poet, novelist, social justice activist, and Anglican priest.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a college student who's majoring in Interpreting this book got recommended to me by my professor as a wonderful way of describing the real world of an Interpreter.
I like the way it deals with such a delicate topic.I'm not much of an history person but this book really has woken my interest in it. I fell in love with the characters after a few pages and made me even more exited to become an interpreter. Even though knowing how difficult the love between these two is who seem to be so different and yet so alike in a way.

Love is in the details......

I really loved the way of writing and would recommend it to everyone especially people who want to become interpreters or are just interested into languages.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book about poetry and war and what it means to have a conflict of interest, but to still need to talk about what is happening. It's a musing on nationhood and how we construct our identities and have them constructed for us. And it's also about foreign policy and foreign intervention and how the law works, and how the law cannot hold everything and help everyone who is hurt by conflict, but how the individuals within the system try anyway. What's particularly fascinating about it is that this conflict is narrated by a war-correspondent and an interpreter. This book is about the power of words and how they slip and slide between languages and how people talk at, and past, and against each other. Don't get me wrong, it's harrowing, but it was worth it for me.

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

At one level this is a love story. Daniel is a journalist who has been reporting on the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession. He meets Ljilja, who is an interpreter at the war crimes tribunal at the Hague. One of her professional obligations is confidentiality, she should not speak to journalists about anything she hears. And Daniel's obligation as a journalist is to report what happens, while protecting his sources. They are attracted to each other, but their professional obligations are in conflict.

Once a month a small group of us meet at a cafe for informal discussions of Christianity and literature and when we met last week my wife Val mentioned this book, which she had just finished reading. I've already mentioned some of the things that struck her in a report on that gathering here Neoinklings: alienation and otherness | Khanya. One of the bits she read out at the gathering was about the Orthodox monks at Decani in Kosovo, who gave asylum to those fleeing from the violence, and urging people to talk instead of fighting.

And that is really what the book is about -- the inability to communicate, which breaks down into violence.

One of the things that struck me, and which is alluded to in the book in passing, is that at the very time when South Africa was turning from violent confrontation to talking, and abandoning apartheid, much of Eastern Europe was going in the opposite direction. I've also dealt with this more fully in this article Nationalism, violence and reconciliation, which I think also gives some of the background story for this novel. And so the book rings true.

I recall a member of our church, a school teacher who originally came from Dubrovnik, whose father was an Orthodox priest, saying that people she had grown up with and gone to school with, whom she had regarded as friends and neighbours, would no longer talk to her, no longer answer her letters, because of the hatred being fostered between different ethnic groups.

And the descriptions of those rising ethnic barriers captured for me the essence of the spirit of apartheid. Yugoslavia was entering a nightmare that we were just leaving. One of the characters, accused of war crimes and awaiting trial...

He had felt the cold clear satisfaction of a job done well, the decisive pleasure of colours shifting on a map, the weight of a gun at his waist. But only because it had to happen, there was a force of history behind him, if it had not been him it would have been someone else, anyone else, history would have its way.

And I could picture the apartheid apparatchik in his office in Pretoria, looking at his map with satisfaction on receiving a report of these people moved from that area, those people moved to this place, as the territory and its population changed to conform to the Platonic ideal of a map in his office.

And again the same character in the novel, echoing the same faceless bureaucrat in Pretoria:

To be able to say, I will draw this line here, and these people will be on the other side of it. Apart from us. So that we can be alone, and pure and safe, and these people will be the darkness of the other side. No one who has not had this chance could understand the sweep of it. The exaltation.

And there it is again, the essence of the unclean spirit of apartheid, exorcised from South Africa, moving to the Balkans, but not excluding the possibility of returning. No, not at all.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Between Mountains. by Maggie Helwig. First published 2004.

This storyline is very intense. Although it is driven through the interaction of the relationship and work of two main characters, for me it was a very detailed, precise description of the war in the former Yugoslavia and the formation, function of the first war crimes tribunal. Some errors but it was eerie how well this writer described certain detail. The two main characters are both dealing with demons from war and crimes. Their relationship suffers because of rules needing to be observed to ensure partiality....

A journalist Daniel, originally from Canada relocated to London then covering the war in the former Yugoslavia...on and on. A interpreter, born within a mixed Balkans family relocated to Paris making her living working in Paris teaching and translating using her various language skills, Lili, meets Daniel. Their paths cross and as stated above rules intervene as Lili works as an interpreter in The Hague and conflicts arise from Daniel’s war reporting articles and connections to defendants and events.....through to 2000.

Very well worth reading....the attempts of mortals to right the failings of humanity....the many victims or types of casualties from such a war.....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggi...

[Tracee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Man this was a tough slog. It was well written but very dense. Could only read in small chunks. It’s a tough subject matter surrounding the Bosnian Kosovo war. The first third of the book was promising but not sure why I continued to read it, as I said, it was a tough slog.

[Magpie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gone to Chloe

[Jay W.]

Didn't finish

[Gloria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lili and Daniel meet by accident. She is a professional interpreter and he is a journalist. She is working on the war trials resulting from the Serbian genocide; he is a journalist who has met and reported on that war and the man now accused of participating in that genocide. They each must come to terms with the rules governing her job and the scope of his knowledge. Helwig manages the tension very well. Her language is beautiful. We are steadily drawn in to the relationship, and I found myself dreading their next conversations for fear that lines might be crossed. This was a page-turner for me.

[maggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learnt a lot about Balkan issues but the storyline was tedious.