The bridge betrayed

In this passionate yet carefully documented book, Sells draws on Balkan literature, unpublished United Nations reports, Internet postings, and personal contacts in the region to reveal for the first time the central role played by religious mythology and stereotyping in the Bosnian tragedy. Sells, himself of Serbian American descent, traces the cultural logic of genocide to the manipulation by contemporary nationalists of the ancient battle of Kosovo - in which the fallen Serb prince Lazar is viewed as a Christ figure and Muslims are portrayed as "Christ-Killers" who must be exterminated before the crucified Serb nation can be resurrected. He shows how intellectuals and clergy created a "Christoslavic" nationalism that viewed converts to Islam as traitors to the Slavic race and marked out their descendants for destruction. Sells also reveals how Western policy makers rewarded the perpetrators of the genocide and punished the victims. He concludes by explaining how the multireligious society of Bosnia served as a bridge between Christendom and Islam, symbolized by the now-destroyed ancient bridge at Mostar. In addition, he makes clear what is at stake, in the effort to preserve Bosnia, for the entire post-cold war world and especially for multireligious societies such as our own.