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Through the Embers of Chaos: Balkan Journeys
While bicycling hundreds of miles through beautiful yet tragically depopulated regions of Albania and the former Yugoslavia, Dervla stayed with families forcibly uprooted, their lives devastated by murder and pillage. Conversations revealed the griefs and confusions of ordinary people, many of whom were extraordinarily brave and resilient during the 'decade of decay'. Throughout her travels, Dervla tries to make sense of the confusing history and politics of the area. Through the Embers of Chaos is an extraordinary achievement; it describes a journey that demanded the greatest emotional and physical stamina (not least as she was attacked and robbed three times in Albania). The result is a truly unusual view on the Balkan countryside.
388 pages, Paperback
First published September 12, 2002
15 people are currently reading
283 people want to read
About the author
Dervla Murphy
52 books277 followersDervla Murphy’s first book, Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, was published in 1965. Over twenty travel books followed including her highly acclaimed autobiography, Wheels Within Wheels.
Dervla won worldwide praise for her writing and many awards, including the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing and the Royal Geographical Award for the popularisation of geography.
Few of the epithets used to describe her – ‘travel legend’, ‘intrepid’ or ‘the first lady of Irish cycling’ – quite do justice to her extraordinary achievement.
She was born in 1931 and remained passionate about travel, writing, politics, Palestine, conservation, bicycling and beer until her death in 2022.
Dervla won worldwide praise for her writing and many awards, including the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing and the Royal Geographical Award for the popularisation of geography.
Few of the epithets used to describe her – ‘travel legend’, ‘intrepid’ or ‘the first lady of Irish cycling’ – quite do justice to her extraordinary achievement.
She was born in 1931 and remained passionate about travel, writing, politics, Palestine, conservation, bicycling and beer until her death in 2022.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 2, 2019
Of all Murphy's books, this is the one that affected me the most. Her travels in the Balkans in the 1990s reveals a total mess. She is not shy of indicating which "tribes" are trying to play ball and which are not. This is a haunting book, a must read for anyone with an interest in the area.
September 27, 2009
It is hard to understand Balkan Politics and I don't necessarily trust the author to tell me straight (if she knows, if there is a straight). I am really trying to understand, kind of mourning Yugoslavia along with the author, but her sympathy for the Serbs is grating.
I am back to it, touring a broken, bombed out Serbia struggling to put themselves back together. I wish Yugoslavia had just stayed Yugoslavia but I guess we have to deal with what happened and not what we wish happened, too bad.
Yes, I am STILL reading this. I'm with this Irish grandmother touring the Balkans on a bicycle. It is overwhelming and hard to read. How many bombed out ruins and displaced persons and stories of atrocities can a person take. And yet how can we ignore it? Sometimes I hate non-fiction. Also, I have never seen so many abbreviations in my life, every military group over there, and there are a lot, have their own. And each political entity as well. I am not exaggerating! I can't wait to finish this book.
We have just spent a lot of time in Albania where the author was repeatedly kicked, spat upon, stolen from and verbally insulted. Evidently she looks Serbian; I'm glad she wasn't murdered. Listen to this quote from the book, "...no one has been brought to justice for the 900 murders committed in the 10 months since Kosovo became a NATO protectorate." Basically the Albanian mafia is running the place.
I have finished this marathon of a book. My mind is still quite take up with thoughts of the Balkans. I can hardly believe that I am not there anymore. My final thoughts have to do with feeling an apalled shock and sadness with Nato for Operation Storm (in which 200,000 Krajina Serbs were forced to leave their homes and run for their lives) and for Operation Allied Force (the AirWar) in which depleted uranium and cluster bombs were used. The Balkans don’t sound like a nice place to visit (“Nationalism” has destroyed the peace of what was Yugoslavia) nevertheless one can’t help but sympathize with the suffering. Americans are a sympathetic lot which is why our government soothes uswith ideas of bombing as a humanitarian act. The author does a good job of showing us the astounding natural beauty of this place juxtaposed with war damage and garbage.
A few quotes:
“...Abdic’s militia, known as the APWB forces. Not to be confused with those other forces then operating in BiH - the Armija (Bosnian Muslim Army), the BSA (the Bosnian Serb Army), the NV (the Croatian Army), the HVO (Bosnian Croat Army), the JNA (Yugoslav National Army), and the SARSK (Serbian Army of the Republic of Srpska Krajina). It is sometimes argued, only half-jokingly, that the Great Powers betrayed BiH not for any sinister political reasons but quite simply because they couldn’t get a handle on who was fighting whom - and when, where and why.”
Quoting a Bosniak named Zejnil, “Many are dead. Killed in their houses...Others ran away. Who knows where they are now? They could have such bad memories they don’t want to come back. That is our sadness. The memories are very bad. Here was a happy place when I grew up. You can see it was a good place, all those ruins comfortable homes, no big problems...We didn’t need a war. It wasn’t like oppressed people making a revolution to get a better life. Our war only made life worse for everyone. The Serbs in Replublica Sprska have a worse life now than they had in Yugoslavia. Nobody won our war.”
Quoted from Haris, a Bosnian from Trebinje, “Stereotyping is so dangerous, people can become as they are presented. All those reports of atrocities, year after year, about the Serbs did this, the Croats did that, the Bosniaks did the other - when most of them didn’t. Most were victims and many were heroes...All the Nationalists want it supressed, they need mutual hate to keep their pots boiling.”
On spending time with Chetniks (Serbian Nationalists) “By the end of Day Two I longed to escape from the Chetnik ambience. Then I told myself that it would be cowardly to reject this opportunity to not only observe but to feel in my very guts the source of the poison that had killed Yugoslavia. ... My companions were driven, obsessed, consumed and degraded by a white-hot hatred of Albanians, Bosnians, Croatians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Turks, Russians, Communism, the Catholic Church, the Protestant Churches, the UK, the US, the EU, the UN, Nato, their own President Djukanovic and of course Slobodan Milosevic - seen as a traitor who negotiated with the US at Dayton and surrendered Kosovo to end the airwar. One was aware of hatred as the cement that held their deranged personalities together; the fuel that gave them emotional energy.”
I am back to it, touring a broken, bombed out Serbia struggling to put themselves back together. I wish Yugoslavia had just stayed Yugoslavia but I guess we have to deal with what happened and not what we wish happened, too bad.
Yes, I am STILL reading this. I'm with this Irish grandmother touring the Balkans on a bicycle. It is overwhelming and hard to read. How many bombed out ruins and displaced persons and stories of atrocities can a person take. And yet how can we ignore it? Sometimes I hate non-fiction. Also, I have never seen so many abbreviations in my life, every military group over there, and there are a lot, have their own. And each political entity as well. I am not exaggerating! I can't wait to finish this book.
We have just spent a lot of time in Albania where the author was repeatedly kicked, spat upon, stolen from and verbally insulted. Evidently she looks Serbian; I'm glad she wasn't murdered. Listen to this quote from the book, "...no one has been brought to justice for the 900 murders committed in the 10 months since Kosovo became a NATO protectorate." Basically the Albanian mafia is running the place.
I have finished this marathon of a book. My mind is still quite take up with thoughts of the Balkans. I can hardly believe that I am not there anymore. My final thoughts have to do with feeling an apalled shock and sadness with Nato for Operation Storm (in which 200,000 Krajina Serbs were forced to leave their homes and run for their lives) and for Operation Allied Force (the AirWar) in which depleted uranium and cluster bombs were used. The Balkans don’t sound like a nice place to visit (“Nationalism” has destroyed the peace of what was Yugoslavia) nevertheless one can’t help but sympathize with the suffering. Americans are a sympathetic lot which is why our government soothes uswith ideas of bombing as a humanitarian act. The author does a good job of showing us the astounding natural beauty of this place juxtaposed with war damage and garbage.
A few quotes:
“...Abdic’s militia, known as the APWB forces. Not to be confused with those other forces then operating in BiH - the Armija (Bosnian Muslim Army), the BSA (the Bosnian Serb Army), the NV (the Croatian Army), the HVO (Bosnian Croat Army), the JNA (Yugoslav National Army), and the SARSK (Serbian Army of the Republic of Srpska Krajina). It is sometimes argued, only half-jokingly, that the Great Powers betrayed BiH not for any sinister political reasons but quite simply because they couldn’t get a handle on who was fighting whom - and when, where and why.”
Quoting a Bosniak named Zejnil, “Many are dead. Killed in their houses...Others ran away. Who knows where they are now? They could have such bad memories they don’t want to come back. That is our sadness. The memories are very bad. Here was a happy place when I grew up. You can see it was a good place, all those ruins comfortable homes, no big problems...We didn’t need a war. It wasn’t like oppressed people making a revolution to get a better life. Our war only made life worse for everyone. The Serbs in Replublica Sprska have a worse life now than they had in Yugoslavia. Nobody won our war.”
Quoted from Haris, a Bosnian from Trebinje, “Stereotyping is so dangerous, people can become as they are presented. All those reports of atrocities, year after year, about the Serbs did this, the Croats did that, the Bosniaks did the other - when most of them didn’t. Most were victims and many were heroes...All the Nationalists want it supressed, they need mutual hate to keep their pots boiling.”
On spending time with Chetniks (Serbian Nationalists) “By the end of Day Two I longed to escape from the Chetnik ambience. Then I told myself that it would be cowardly to reject this opportunity to not only observe but to feel in my very guts the source of the poison that had killed Yugoslavia. ... My companions were driven, obsessed, consumed and degraded by a white-hot hatred of Albanians, Bosnians, Croatians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Turks, Russians, Communism, the Catholic Church, the Protestant Churches, the UK, the US, the EU, the UN, Nato, their own President Djukanovic and of course Slobodan Milosevic - seen as a traitor who negotiated with the US at Dayton and surrendered Kosovo to end the airwar. One was aware of hatred as the cement that held their deranged personalities together; the fuel that gave them emotional energy.”
October 13, 2011
Very sobering book that writes in detail about the conflicts in the Balkans in the early to late 1990's--no one comes out looking good here, plenty of blame for the violence to go around, and names are named--as well as a lot of anonymous people that the author met along the way and protects their identities. Very interesting read from a travel writer who wanted to present a more balanced view of the situation, rather than trying to find good guys and bad guys.
March 10, 2009
I really wish I liked Dervla Murphy better because she is always going to interesting places that I am interested in reading about. And I wish I could figure out what it is I don't like about her. I agree with her about almost everything but I find her personality so grating! And in a book like this, her personality is a huge part of the story.
August 12, 2013
She's a better woman than me...she cycled round the Balkans in 2000 when the war was still going on...I'd be scared to travel in certain. parts of the area right now. While she was there she was robbed, kicked and intimidated but never put off from sharing her experiences of the area, which she details the history of in depth. she's a truly remarkable woman and a global treasure.
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November 27, 2015I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
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March 19, 2024
This book was a mixed read - pleasant travel-related passages (maybe 1/4th of the book) interspersed with deep political analysis and history (probably 1/2 the book), mingled with, by this point in her life, jaded bitterness at the ‘first world’s’ involvement in and abandonment of the region that was formerly Yugoslavia (the rest of the book).
I had hoped for more anecdotes about culture, but at the time of her visit, shortly after the wars in the Balkans, the geography and traumatized local population were, as the book title suggests, both a shambles. From closed off roads littered with landmines, to burned remains of towns and villages, to piles and piles of garbage and debris defiling even the most staggering of natural wonders, this book depressed me. I found myself skimming and skipping huge sections because it was all so negative and repetitive.
This book is not easy to digest and will raise your anxiety. I read through to the last page, taking almost 3 wks to get through roughly 350 pages, and my overwhelming takeaway is that this was not worth the time investment.
I had hoped for more anecdotes about culture, but at the time of her visit, shortly after the wars in the Balkans, the geography and traumatized local population were, as the book title suggests, both a shambles. From closed off roads littered with landmines, to burned remains of towns and villages, to piles and piles of garbage and debris defiling even the most staggering of natural wonders, this book depressed me. I found myself skimming and skipping huge sections because it was all so negative and repetitive.
This book is not easy to digest and will raise your anxiety. I read through to the last page, taking almost 3 wks to get through roughly 350 pages, and my overwhelming takeaway is that this was not worth the time investment.
August 2, 2017
I didn't enjoy this as much as Murphy's "Transylvania and Beyond" in which she travels through Romania but I think this may be down to the subject matter. In this book she explores Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Kosovo during the late 1990s and reports on the fallout of the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
Like Brian Hall's "The Impossible Country" written seven or eight years earlier Murphy describes the kaleidoscope of people's and their fears and hatreds that are both bewildering and depressing. But she adds into the mix her own view of NATO, KFOR and the other alphabets which she sees as being part of the problem rather than the solution; a contrary view to the one generally heard.
The endless combinations of ethnicities, nationalities etc is difficult to follow and while the 1990s is an important period in recent history it still feels too depressing.
Like Brian Hall's "The Impossible Country" written seven or eight years earlier Murphy describes the kaleidoscope of people's and their fears and hatreds that are both bewildering and depressing. But she adds into the mix her own view of NATO, KFOR and the other alphabets which she sees as being part of the problem rather than the solution; a contrary view to the one generally heard.
The endless combinations of ethnicities, nationalities etc is difficult to follow and while the 1990s is an important period in recent history it still feels too depressing.
October 30, 2018
An excellent portrayal of everyday post-war life in the Balkans. Dervla has the ability to charm those she speaks to and the result is the presentation of informative and nuanced perspectives from real people. Also, I love hearing about her bicycle journeys.
December 14, 2017
Harrowing
May 24, 2025
I had a difficult time rating this book. I've only read two other Dervla Murphy's books which were excellent and left me wanting to read more about her travels. But "Through the Embers of Chaos" was depressing to read and I had difficulty finishing it because of the content. The Balkans at the time of Murphy's visit ,was tragic and and just plain horrible. I needed to read a light-hearted book after this one.
September 11, 2011
Dervla Murphy, a little old lady form Ireland, makes more sense of the Balkans conflict than a truckload of politicians. Dervla takes her bike and travels through the Balkans in post conflict ex-Yugoslavia, braving badly lit tunnels, thieving Albanians, pot holed roads and local gangsters.
March 13, 2009
very interesting as a travel story. Murphy´s conclusions on the other hand are hard to follow.
May 12, 2016
This is Dervla Murphy at her best, as she sets off on an often hazardous journey cycling round the Balkans.
An insightful look into life in the Balkans after the conflicts.
An insightful look into life in the Balkans after the conflicts.
July 12, 2016
This book is quite good but busy and with very unfamiliar name places. thank goodness for Google It gave a good walk thru the conflicts that have hurt this region so profoundly
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews