Rating: 
Summary: Biased, long-winded, only sometimes helpful
Review: It amazes me that "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" is still being read by people to inform themselves about the former Yugoslavia. It's not that the book lacks merit, but this value mainly lies in a number of West's keen observations of Yugoslav politics and society during the late 1930s and in the large number of interesting statements made by the people she met and associated with. Thus, it can be used as something of a supplement for the study of South Slav society in a given historical period--the 1930s (although cautiously, as West is notoriously biased). Also, her forays into (mainly) Serbian history contain a number of fascinating anecdotes, even if her general presentation leaves something to be desired. The key problem with "Black Lamb" is that it is also a very prejudiced text: West has her obvious favorites among the Yugoslav peoples, and her anti-Germanism sometimes borders on racism. This is understandable given that she wrote the book as Nazi Germany was attacking England, but it seriously taints many of her general conclusions about Germany and the Germans and their role in Central Europe. Additionally, although her most frequent criticism of the Germans is their allegedly irrational hatred of the Slavs, her own views are imbued with a patronizing fetishization of the Slavs that is only a little better than this apparent German animosity. West also spends a good deal of time bemoaning the horrible consequences of "Turkish" (i.e. Ottoman) rule in the Balkans, even though the Ottoman presence in this region had many positive as well as negative aspects. This, together with West's excessively lengthy, opinionated and often mind-numbing lectures on art, architecture, politics, philosophy and her skewed presentations of history (this is in fact why a book about a six-week tour of Yugoslavia meanders on for well over 1,000 pages) truly make this a poor source for general information on the Yugoslav peoples. Unfortunately, because it is still so widely read for precisely this reason (especially after it was re-popularized by Robert Kaplan in his equally flawed "Balkan Ghosts") and, somewhat inexplicably, because many serious Balkan scholars still include it in their bibliographies and reading lists, "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" is something of an unavoidable text for anyone really interested in the former Yugoslavia. My point is simply that this book should not become the foundation for anyone's knowledge or study of this topic.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Love it or hate it, anyone with an interest in the Balkans will eventually have to deal with this book. Rebecca West is one of the giants of 20th century literature. Never heard of her? I hadn't either until I read this sprawling opus. Don't be put off by the size of the book, however (West herself writes that most people probably won't read this book because of the massive length). Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a travelogue detailing West's travels through 1930's Yugoslavia. The book goes far beyond travelogue as West intersperses massive doses of Slavic history and philosophy with her travel accounts. Not only do we see the things she sees, we understand the mentality of the people. These people she meets and places she visits become almost mystical under her magical pen. I read this book over a six week period at the end of the summer. Like West on her travels, I meandered through the book, reading it religiously at times and then setting it down for a bit to read other things. This might be the best way to read the book. It allows the reader to absorb what West is trying to say without being overwhelmed by the immense amounts of information.I have to say that I was most fascinated by her discourses on Yugoslav history. Balkan history can be a challenge because most of us in the West really don't understand the people or places involved. A section on the assassination of Franz Ferdinand runs on forever and never becomes boring. In fact, I became so enraptured of this event that I started reading other works concerning the assassination. Even though there are some problems with West's interpretation of history, her accounts are so well written that it makes the reader want to go out and read more about these events. Many have criticized Rebecca West for her bias and her tendency to simplify history. This is a valid concern. Her most serious transgression is her rabid hatred of anything German. It literally infects parts of the book with a somber, unpleasant tone. Right from the beginning of the book we see West criticizing a group of German tourists who are on a train with her as she travels into the Balkans. The bias finds greatest expression when West writes about her relationship with her Yugoslav guide Constantine and his wife Gerda. Constantine is a Jew and a Slav, but Gerda is a German whom West seems to believe is a Nazi. West's slanders on Gerda are endless, so much so that Constantine himself eventually turns against West. What is important to remember is that West is English and World War II was only a few years away. West actually wrote this book a few years after her trip, in 1941, so war was already raging between the two countries. If I were a German, I would be offended by West's comments. Please read this book. I guarantee you'll enjoy it, at least to some extent. Even if you don't like history, the descriptions of the Yugoslav people and places are enchanting. I wanted to hop on a plane and go to Yugoslavia after reading this book, although it's important to remember that this account was written during World War II and before the Communist occupation that followed the war. I imagine things have changed quite a bit in this part of the world since the 1930's. What prose! What endless beauty! Images that flow like honey! Read this and dream!!
Rating: 
Summary: A real Christmas Pudding of a book!
Review: Masses of fascinating information here,some of it silver thruppeney bits, some of it perhaps nuts. Written in a truly remarkable travelogue style. What is perhaps the most impressive element of the book is the depth of some of the conversations that West recounts- a truly humbling experience given that these discussions, that often cover hundreds of years of history must have been conducted simultaneously in several different languages! It is a sad commentary on the present era that such a conversation is unlikely to occur again. A must read for anyone serios about the Balkans.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful reading but narrow history
Review: Ms West was a great storyteller and she shines in this book. The problem I find is that she, like Rousseau,loved the primitive,hated the empires and glorified ethnicity and nationalism. She had plenty of opportunity to see the hatred first hand,hatreds that incubated the present holocaust. Balance= 3 stars. J. Amador
Rating:
Summary: The Mind of the Balkan
Review: Never before and never after have the mind of this tortured region - the Balkan - been thus penetrated: with such passionate, humane precision, with such eloquence, with such empathy and such conviction. A classic, if ever there was any, a masterpiece without a doubt. It is as fresh as yesterday's news and as ancient as the monasteries it describes. It is an eternal work, a must for Balkan afficionados, a work of scholarship and love. Influenced by it, I wrote this (in my 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'): 'The Balkans is the unconscious of the world...It is here that the repressed memories of history, its traumas and fears and images reside. It is here that the psychodynamics of humanity - the tectonic clash between Rome and Byzantium, West and East, Judeo-Christianity and Islam - is still easily discernible.' Thank you, Rebecca West. Sam Vaknin, author of 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'.
Rating:
Summary: Pure pleasure
Review: One has to stand in awe before this enormous (ll40 pages) masterpiece of literary travel writing, even with its prejudice and poetry and occasional unkindness. Ms West and her husband and Constantine (he of the stubby fingers and wicked keyboard technique who tells unbelievable stories and opines on every imaginable topic) travel through Yugoslavia at the time Hitler is gaining power in Germany and the Habsburg Empire is just a dirty memory. Constantine is a Serb utterly devoted to the continued existence of the Yugoslav state but he's married to a dreadful hausfrau who despises anything that is not German and especially Slavs. She thus makes her own life miserable and does a number on the lives of everyone else. The book offers rich descriptions of all the states that make up (or made up)Yugoslavia, including religious and social customs, the mental and emotional tendencies of the people (sometimes depending on which outside influences -- Turkish, Austrian -- have impacted them most decisively). Montenegran men come in for high praise because because of their physical beauty and the presumed ease with which they could inseminate any woman. The book is a masterwork of richly textured Enlgish prose done in long, elegant, sometimes convoluted sentence that are a delight to read and may remind some readers of Proust. St. Paul and St. Augustine come in for the mistreatment they so richly deserve (the author traces several questionable religious practices she encounters to ideas found in their writings). This is a work for reasonably well educated adults, so anyone approaching it in search of accurate factual history is making a mistake. But nor will it mislead anyone on matters of historical fact.
Rating:
Summary: A Modern Masterpiece
Review: One of the most passionate and beautiful travel books ever written, and a masterpiece of 20th century prose. Written during the London Blitz, as West doubted the survival of our species, this book uses the outline of a travel memoir through Yugoslavia as a structure to critique all of Western Civilization. West shows a strong pro-Serb bias that alienated some readers when the book came out, but most acknowledged it as one of the great books of the century. The language is ironic, clever, philosophic, despairing, wonderful by turns. But fair warning - the book is quite massive and takes some dedication. You will have to read the first twenty pages or so to know if it's for you, but if it is, you will never forget it.
Rating: 
Summary: As the emperor said to Mozart, "Too many notes!"
Review: Or in this case, "Too many words." Among serious books this is the most needlessly verbose and narcissistic I've ever read (exclusive of anything by Proust.) It must be largely fictional since West purportedly repeats verbatim many extremely lengthy and involved conversations and disputes that would only be capable of capture by a tape recorder--and she didn't have one. It is entirely pro-Slavic and tediously anti-German. To West, Gavrilo Pricip is a hero and the Archduke Francis merely a foreign agitator. She includes a vast array of detailed historical anecdotes but leaves one doubtful of her accuracy. She is apparently unaware, for instance, (perhaps deliberately) that the Albanians are not Slavs, that their ancestors were the ancient Illyrians, and that their roots in the Balkans go back to at least 2000 B.C. Some claim to admire her writing style; I found it excessively wordy and personalized.
Rating: 
Summary: A British Tourist's View of Yugoslavia
Review: Rebecca West spent 6 weeks as a tourist in Yugoslavia, and somehow ended up as the most frequently quoted writer about the area. This is probably because her beautiful prose style and gift for storytelling mask the deep and pervasive flaws in her perception of the country. My rating (3 stars) is an attempt to average the book's strengths and flaws. BL&GF is well worth reading as a travelogue; by turns epigrammatic (good), anecdotal (good), and philosophical (not so good), it is nearly always absorbing. ("Nearly always" because those philosophical passages do have to be endured.) Don't go looking for more than that, because she is notoriously unreliable as an interpreter of Yugoslavia. The situation in which she wrote it--early World War II--overshadows her perceptions of the place, slanting the book in favor of the Serbs and against the Croats, the Albanians, and just about everyone else. Her sympathy for the poor beleaguered Serbs looks pretty foolish in retrospect. She also betrays a very shallow understanding of the complex and shifting web of ethnicities in the area (particularly in Kosovo, which she calls "Old Serbia"). So by all means read BL&GF; just take that "definitive work about Yugoslavia" reputation with a grain of salt. If you really want to understand the Balkans, though, read Edith Durham--she spent 7 years in the area, did relief work for the Macedonians and Albanians, did the first serious ethnographic work on the Albanians, was a war correspondent in the Balkan Wars, and became a national heroine in Albania. (She's also a much better observer than Dame Rebecca to begin with; and an entertaining storyteller, with a sharp sense of humor.)
Rating:
Summary: Utterly Fascinating
Review: Rebecca West was a novelist, biographer, journalist, and critic born in 1892, when women were not liberated. Even so, in the 1920s she began working for the New York Herald-Tribune as a reviewer. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon was her magnum opus, published in 1941, after Yugoslavia had been conquered by the Nazis. This book is not only a travelogue through the Yugoslavia of the mid-1930s but it is a history of the region from the time of the Romans until the fall to the Nazis in 1941. A lot of what she has to say explains the problems that exist in the region today and why there must be a U. N. Peacekeeping Force there. It is a long book (1150 pages) but it is well-written and well-worth the read.
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