Rating: 
Summary: I want to go
Review: Get this book.If there is one book you should read, that is pivotal in early 20th Century History, I'd strongly recommend that you read this book. By following Rebecca West's footsteps through Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, she engages you with her trivial and quaint observations of people and places, set against her awesome knowledge of art and history, which is fascinating and worth re-reading time and time again. And then you realize that this journey took place just before the start of the second world war. What a place to be, what a time to live, what a book to write. It is a long book, no doubt about that. In some respects, it is too short to fully tell the whole story and she helps with a full bibliography and index. So, get this book and re-live her experiences.
Rating:
Summary: I want to go
Review: Get this book. If there is one book you should read, that is pivotal in early 20th Century History, I'd strongly recommend that you read this book. By following Rebecca West's footsteps through Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, she engages you with her trivial and quaint observations of people and places, set against her awesome knowledge of art and history, which is fascinating and worth re-reading time and time again. And then you realize that this journey took place just before the start of the second world war. What a place to be, what a time to live, what a book to write. It is a long book, no doubt about that. In some respects, it is too short to fully tell the whole story and she helps with a full bibliography and index. So, get this book and re-live her experiences.
Rating: 
Summary: I was very disappointed by this book
Review: I bought this book recently interested to learn more about a troubled region and because of its description as "a masterpiece...in the subtlety and power of its judgment..." and "...one of the great books of our century". Deeply disappointed after the initial chapters, I could not force myself to read it beyond the 94th page of the Penguin Book edition. Let me tell you why. In the end of the prologue the author states: "I am never sure of the reality of what I see, if I have seen it only once; I know that until it has firmly established its objective existence by impressing my senses and my memory, I am capable of conscripting it into the service of a private dream." This sentence explains best why this whole book seems to be nothing but a private dream; she sees most things only once, and many of the historical anecdotes described by her not at all. Her bias towards one of the nations begins with her Note on Pronunciation, and her understanding and comments on the spelling of local names is representative of what she does to the history and facts found in this region. Magnificent in volume and truly eloquent descriptions of private dreams that begin on page one with the description of a dream-like state induced by anesthesia, and this state of mind seems to permeate the whole book. If you are interested in that and in numerous irrelevant stories and fictionalized history, you will love this book. If you want objective information on this region, and will be bothered by not being able to differentiate between what is fact and what fiction, you should probably stay away from it, since it will be a waste of your time. There are much better books than this one. For the lovers of fiction I can only recommend the Noble prize winning "The Bridge on the Drina" by Ivo Andric, a true masterpiece, or for the lovers of fact and history the excellent and fun to read chapters on Yugoslavia in "Eastern Approaches" by Fitzroy MacLean.
Rating: 
Summary: This is Serbia?
Review: I have a highly ambivalent realtionship with this book, and with Rebecca West. She present stories as history, but they are wonderful stories (hm, that should probably be "wonderful Serbian stories" considering West's preferences). They main problem I have with this book is West's "noble-savage complex". She sees a guy carrying a lamb in a hotel lobby and concludes that Serbia is untainted by the restrictions of Western Bourgeois Civilisation. She dislikes Croatia because she believes that people have been spoiled by their interraction with the Austrian Empire. So, everything in Serbia, and especially Kosovo, is unspoilt and delightful, everything in Croatia is germanised and uptight: look out for the ever so picturesque Albanians, notable in West's eyes predominantly for the precarious positioning of their trousers. It IS a good book, but probably best to go and see for yourself before drawing any major conclusions about the "balkan soul".
Rating: 
Summary: Long and difficult, but worth it
Review: I have read the book, and the reviews to date. I agree that the book was too wordy. West seems to indulge all too much in stream of conscious writing. A good editor would have helped to focus the book more. It combines a travelogue with history, a dangerous combination as it becomes all too easy to lose historical continuity: her thoughts are prompted by what she sees, and thus she wanders back and forth through regional history in a way that confused me. But, the insights, I think, were very interesting. But beware: she has terrible prejudices that would be totally non-PC in a writer today: her views on Germans, Austrians, Russians, and homosexuals are probably unsustainable. She tends to oversimplify Jews and their views(other reviewers mentioning Constantine missed the complication: he was Jewish with an almost Nazi wife). To those who say her book tends to explain modern Kosovo and KLA actions, I say no. I think there is a very important piece of post WW2 history that I do not understand, but I know is there, that also has a very big impact. The whole answer is not there as far as I can see. It took a very long time for me to get through the book, simply its length and somewhat distracting habit of going off on tangents tended to exhaust me. But, for what it is, I think it deserves the accolades and should be read by anyone with an interest in European or Balkan or religious history.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written, but biased historical fiction.
Review: I purchased BL&GF a week ago to read about the former Yugoslavia. I can understand that after the first Great War there was plenty anti German sentiment to go around. The racial and ethnic stereotypes do not stop with Germans but with Croats, Bosniaks, Montenegrins, and Macedonians. The latter which were referred to as either Bulgarians or Serbs. It was well written but historically inaccurate. All we need now is for Oliver Stone to Direct the movie.
Rating:
Summary: A great read for the travel minded
Review: I read this book while living in Tuzla, Bosnia. I've talked with the people and lived there, the attitudes of the public have not changed much and the same goes for the politics. To some West may seem to have favorites, but it is her book and her trip, read, learn, and follow along. The places she has been are really as beautiful as she describes them, the valleys are deep and green in the summer and white and serene in the winter. The people friendly, and welcoming. I truly enjoyed the book and am at this time reading it for the second time, reliving the experiences she had and the memories I have of that beautiful but troubled county.
Rating:
Summary: Why the "encyclopedic" is interesting
Review: I read _Black Lamb and Grey Falcon_ about three years ago, just as the Kosovo conflict was at its height, and the book seemed to me then almost an essential primer to Yugoslav history and politics as seen from Anglo-American eyes. West has a strong tendency to simplify history and to write through the lens of prejudices against Germans and Muslims, so don't take her historical accuracy for granted. But she is a sympathetic traveller, a person who is fascinated by foreign places and who understands that cultural context is everything, and simply for this the book is worthwhile. However, I find the book especially valuable as an example of the "encyclopedic" book: the kind of book that transcends genres (history? travel literature? personal essays? memoir?), that is eager to accumulate and to share knowledge, that a reader ends up wanting to live with. Even though the important conflicts of the day have shifted east from Kosovo (but her discussion of the migration of the Turks into the Balkans is essential material for understanding the place of Muslims in Europe today), her book stays with me: not for what it says about Yugoslavia, but for what it says about how literature can be the tissue that connects individuals and history. Although reading this book is by no means a minor undertaking, it's well worth the time and trouble.
Rating:
Summary: The best travel narrative I've ever read
Review: I'm a Serbian/Croatian linguist for the government, so this book struck my fancy right away. This is the most readable non-fiction book I've ever read. Mdm West's prose makes me feel as if I am traveling with her. I feel that I could easily find my way around 1930's Yugoslavia with no problem. Should I make a trip to Croatia, Bosnia or Serbia anytime in the future, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon will certainly travel with me.
Rating:
Summary: A Dense But Rewarding Masterpiece
Review: In Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West weaves together history, ethnography and travelogue into an encyclopedic and unforgettable portrait of this troubled region. As I explain below, I think there are some marvelous things about this book, and some aspects that are less well realized. On balance, it is well worth the effort, but for somebody considering it, the cautions are worth noting. First the highlights:
West is at her best as a reporter. She has a truly brilliant eye for detail, for simply seeing how the people lived, what they wore, how they worshipped and what they did with their days. Her images, particularly of the remote communities and the many churches and religious shrines that she visited, are particularly well rendered. Although the book lacks photographs or drawings, West's very considerable talents for description are such that the reader really gets a feel for a large number of diverse places within the Balkans.
She also does an excellent job illuminating a great deal of the history of the region, both relatively modern history (meaning modern at the time the book was written -- 1941) and more ancient history. Modern history at the time West wrote meant dealing with the Balkan wars, the series of rebellions by which the vestiges of the Ottoman empire were overthrown in the 19th and early 20th centuries. West devotes particular attention to the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914, which precipitated World War I, an event that at the time of the writing of the book was still relatively recent in the world's memory, and the facts of which were still somewhat controversial. Ancient history meant dealing with the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the decisive battle in which the Turks defeated the Orthodox Serbs led by Tsar Lazar and began to move further north and east in Europe.
West's writing on why liberal democracies are typically reluctant to arm themselves to confront militant totalitarian regimes, which forms a secondary theme, seems quite fresh. West writes as an unabashed liberal and closely analyzes both her own squeamishness about violence and why, in more general terms, liberals' reluctance to use force is ultimately suicidal. Her criticism of the pacifism of the governments of pre-World War II England and France in the face of the visible threat of a rearming Germany and a bellicose Italy is both fascinating and dead-on. One of the points she makes in her admiration of the Slavs is that for five centuries, beginning with the Battle of of Kosovo, and largely ignored by Western Europe, they took arms against the totalitarian regime of their day, militant Islam in the form of the Ottoman empire. Her point of view on this issue is quite clear: for taking on this task, she regards the Serbs to have been the unrecognized and unthanked saviors of Western Christianity.
As brilliant as this book is, however, it will not be to every reader's taste, even those who want to explore the history of the Balkans in depth. West makes little effort to disguise her prejudices: she sees the Slavs as an heroic if primitive race who had been ill-used by the then Great Powers of Europe, Great Britian, France, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And within what was then the newly-formed state of Yugoslavia (which came into being after World War I), she is emphatic in her sympathies for the Serbs, whom she sees as the the descendants of what was good and right in the Byzantine empire. West is equally obvious in her lack of sympathy for the Croats and the Bosnians. But seen through the lens of the more recent wars of Serbian aggression, it is harder to see the Serbs in such an unqualifiedly heroic light.
Other parts of the books also wear less well, including her prolixity (the paperback edition is a whopping 1150 pages of small print). West's long tirades on the evils of the Austro-Hungarian empire seem a curiosity at this point; as evil as it may have been, it has long been relegated to the dustbin of history. Her antipathy to the Germans also seems an historical set piece, although rather more understandable in its context. And West's economic analyses of modern capitalism appear naive and superficial. Finally, the relatively major roles played in her narrative by she and her husband, their Serbian guide Constantine, and his German wife Gerda, are, at best, distracting. But these reservations should be seen for what they are: minor criticisms of an awe-inspiring work.
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