My War Gone By, I Miss It So: Amazon.de: Anthony Loyd: Englische Bücher

Amazon.co.uk

Anthony Loyd's first book is a vivid, haunting account of the war in Bosnia from 1993 to 1996, from where he reported for the Daily Telegraph and then the Times as a special correspondent. However, what separates it from standard reportage is the war Loyd was fighting on a personal front, which drove him to seek war as a "final absolution of self-responsibility". While snipers shot people indiscriminately Loyd, living on whisky-chased adrenaline, fought to understand the compulsion he felt to be there and struggled to shoot the pictures that were the pretext for his presence. It is this battle, set against the brutality that tore the Balkans to shreds, that gives the book its anguished focus and embattled majesty.

Loyd gradually reveals a fractured upbringing, which culminated in the death of the father from whom he had been torturously distant for many years. Five years in the army did little to relieve the embittered emotional hangover that had become his burden, and in indulging the impulse that propelled him to war he was following in the footsteps of generations of males in his family. In addition to the stimulation engendered he was also fighting a heroin dependency that reared up when the buzz of the danger passed.

The descriptions of mortar-damaged flesh in Bosnia do not depart easily from the consciousness of the reader, who is left shuddering at the damage they must have inflicted on the author. Loyd, though, free from the constraints of newspaper journalism, writes with an angrily articulate physicality that throbs with a challenging compassion one longs for him to apply to himself. He finally achieves a redemption of sorts, and in the process has written one of the most uncompromising and personally honest accounts of the ugliness of war that puts to shame complacent apathy. Brave, provocative, essential, but not for those who take cream in their coffee. --David Vincent -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Amazon.com Reviews

My War Gone By, I Miss It So is a fiercely compelling and beautifully written personal account of the Bosnian war. The book alternates between Anthony Loyd's experiences in Bosnia and personal reflections of his time in the British army, his parents' divorce, his estrangement from his father, and his heroin addiction. Loyd describes the war at eye level: detailing the way bodies look after they've been shot or blown up, looking through the sights of a Muslim gun trained on a Serb soldier, traveling with a French mercenary, and fleeing from advancing Serbs during battle. The book is filled with firefights and mutilated corpses and is not for the squeamish. Bosnia was "a playground where the worst and most fantastic excesses of the human mind were acted out." For Loyd, the high of battle substituted for the high of heroin and vice versa: "I had come to Bosnia partially as an adventure. But after a while I got into the infinite death trip. I was not unhappy. Quite the opposite. I was delighted with most of what the war had offered me: chicks, kicks, cash and chaos; teenage punk dreams turned real and wreathed in gunsmoke."

Loyd's big break as a war correspondent came when another British journalist was wounded. He had arrived in Bosnia a war junkie, just trying to figure out what was going on and sell a few pictures to newspapers on the side. "Journalism in itself had never really interested me, I saw it only as a passport to war." He did not cover the war like most other journalists--he went right into battles. Loyd dismisses what other journalists did in Bosnia: staying at the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo, driving out to the UN headquarters in an armored car, and then returning to the relative safety of their hotel "to file their heartfelt vitriol with scarcely a hair out of place." Loyd, who did everything but carry a gun against the Serbs, scoffs at the idea of journalistic objectivity. "What good did reporting ever do in Bosnia anyway?" he sneers. In fact, he seems almost embarrassed not to be fighting himself. "I felt I was a pornographer, a voyeur come to watch." Lucky for the rest of us he did go to Bosnia. --Linda Killian -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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Atemberaubend 24. August 2000

Von Ein Kunde

Format:Taschenbuch

All die Jahre hat man den Krieg in Bosnien ueber die Nachrichten miterlebt. Dieses Buch beschreibt die Welt diesen Krieges, und seine verschiedenen Gesichter. Der Autor schreibt offen ueber seine persoenlichen Gruende sich in diesen Krieg zu begeben. Das Buch gibt den Nachrichtenbildern ein Gesicht und erweitert das Verstaendnis der Situation.

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Compelling 7. Juli 2000

Von Edward Bosnar

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

Loyd's account here is very personal and at times very moving. The fact that he is so candid about his own "addiction" to seeing war and witnessing violence first hand (as well as his heroin addiction) is what makes this such a compelling read. He is also one of the the few, if not only, correspondents to be posted in the Balkans who willingly admits that he was something of a war tourist and a voyeur, viewing the suffering of others secure in the knowledge that he could leave any time. Generally Loyd's book is also free of the often sanctimonious moralizing found in accounts written by Glenny, Reiff, Vulliamy, Bell and scores of others. I can't think of any specific reason why this book is such a good read; it just is. Read it.

My War Gone by, I Miss It So 21. Juni 2000

Von "purelyjoy"

In Sarajevo, the horrors are specific - such as an old couple blasted away by an anti-aircraft gun. In central Bosnia, the horrors come so fast and furious they tend to blend together: vast dislocations of civilians, haggard correspondents rushing to get to the action without getting killed, the ethnic cleansing of the Croats and Serbs. One incident stands out: a young woman raped by a Croat soldier before her bedridden father, who had recently suffered a stroke and could not walk, talk or feed himself. His daughter's rape is one of the last images he takes from this world. Yet, despite such horrors, when Loyd goes to Chechnya in 1995 to witness the Chechens rebellion against the Russians.

Loyd has a matter-of-fact writing style which augments rather than softens the carnage he describes. At the same time he can go ballistic on certain subjects: the incompetent impotence of the U.N. He describes both wars from a ground-level view, making them more understandable while maintaining their chaotic feel: a difficult, yet appreciated balancing act. He humanizes how inhuman war can be. He also describes his own increasing heroin addiction, which, while interesting, doesn't hold the attention of his war reportage. He telling us what he's seen in sometimes beautiful, always pungent prose. Its faults are few. My War Gone By, I Miss It So deserves awards, and mass readership.