THE BOSNIA LIST

With the assistance of Shapiro (Journalism/The New School; Unhooked: How to Quit Anything, 2012, etc.), Trebincevic returns to the scene of childhood trauma during the Bosnian War of the early 1990s.

The author fled the bloody civil war in his native Bosnia in 1993 with his father, mother and older brother, Eldin, and settled in Connecticut. Just 11 years old when the war broke out, the author observed the sudden hostility of the Serbs toward him and his family, native Muslims, as ethnic tensions flared in their diverse town of Brcko and the Muslims were persecuted in the name of Serbian supremacy. His revered karate coach turned a cold shoulder to him, the family’s bank account was depleted, his favorite teacher spat at him on the street (“Everything he’d ever taught me about brotherhood and unity was a lie”), the shopkeepers taunted them, and, most haunting for the boy who could not protect his mother, their neighbor, Petra, gradually appropriated their furnishings and clothes since, as she assured his mother, “You won’t be needing that carpet.” When the author’s father, now in his 70s, a widower since his wife died of cancer, resolved to return to Bosnia in 2011 for a visit, the author and his brother had to swallow their pride and go with him, with enormous trepidation. At 30, the author was “startled by the intensity of [his] fury” when imagining how he would return to his tormentors. Indeed, he drew up a list of grievances to attend to during his visit, including confronting Serb classmates and friends who had turned the family in, especially Petra; peeing on the karate instructor’s grave; and visiting the concentration camp where his father and brother were imprisoned. Yet immersion in his homeland and being bombarded by the new reality challenged his vendetta in surprising ways.

An engaging memoir of war trauma and the redemption to be found in confronting it.