REGISTER: Bette's Speakeasy with Slavenka Drakulić on War Criminals on Trial in The Hague
Bette members—please register for our Sunday Speakeasy with author Slavenka Drakulić, who documented the trials of Yugoslavian war criminals in her book They Would Never Hurt a Fly
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They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in The Hague
I asked Croatian author Slavenka Drakulić to be our guest on Sunday at Bette’s Speakeasy, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern, so our community can hear firsthand from a reporter who documented the trials of war criminals in The Hague.
As always, I appreciate when this community supports our authors by purchasing their books, and you can learn more about her book, They Would Never Hurt a Fly, here:
I met Drakulić through Marci Shore, who led me to her work when I was seeking interviews for this report:
“Ordinary people like you or me—or monsters?”—Slavenka Drakulić
For They Would Never Hurt a Fly, Drakulić set out to understand who the people were behind the crimes committed during the war that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Were they ordinary people or were they monsters?
Drawing on her firsthand observations of the trials at The Hague, Drakulic depicts people accused of murder, rape, torture, and ordering executions during one of the most brutal conflicts in Europe in the twentieth century. She writes about former Serbian president Slobodan Miloševic; Radislav Krstic, the first to be sentenced for genocide; Biljana Plavšic, the only woman accused of war crimes; and Ratko Mladic, who went into hiding.
The hour will be focused on her key takeaways from the The Hague trials for Yugoslavian war criminals, which occurred at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Please do have a look at her additional books — the breadth of work is stunning:
More on Slavenka Drakulić here:
Slavenka Drakulić, born in Croatia (former Yugoslavia) in 1949, is a journalist and a writer whose books have been translated into many languages. Her best-known book in the USA is How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed. Her last collection of essays, Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism, was published by Penguin Random House in January 2021. In the USA, she has published eight non-fiction books and five novels. In 2010 Slavenka’s book S. – A Novel About the Balkans made it into a feature film As If I Am Not There by Juanita Wilson.
In her fiction, Slavenka Drakulić has touched on a variety of topics, such as dealing with illness and fear of death in Holograms of fear; the destructive power of sexual desire in Marble skin; an unconventional love affair in The taste of a man; the cruelty of war and rape victims in S. A Novel About the Balkans. In her novel Optužena (The Accused), Slavenka writes about the not often addressed topic of child abuse by her own mother.
In three novels about creative women living with powerful men (Frida Kahlo, Dora Maar and Mileva Einstein) Slavenka deals with domination and balance of power between partners. In the book of stories Nevidljiva žena i druge priče (Invisible Woman and other stories), Slavenka writes about the taboo of women’s aging.
Her main interests in non-fiction include the political and ideological situation in post-communist countries, war crimes, nationalism, feminist issues, illness and the female body.
In How We Survived Communism and even laughed; Balkan Express and Café Europa she deals with everyday life in communist and post-communist countries. Café Europa Revisited paints a picture of Eastern Europe, thirty years after the end of communism.
Slavenka wrote the history of communism through the perspective of animals in A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism. She explores evil in ordinary people and choices they make in They Would Never Hurt a Fly – War Criminals On Trial In The Hague, about the people who committed crimes during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
Slavenka is a contributing editor in The Nation (USA) and a freelance author whose essays had appeared in The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine and The New York Review Of Books, as well as in Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), Internazionale (Italy), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), The Guardian (UK), Eurozine and other newspapers and magazines. She is the recipient of the 2004 Leipzig Book-fair ”Award for European Understanding.” She lives in Sweden and Croatia.
Looking so forward to hearing from this incredible writer on Sunday about war criminals and justice.
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