''Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia'' is a

travel book The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias (geographer), Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In ...

written by Dame

Rebecca West Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield (21 December 1892 – 15 March 1983), known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books ...

, published in 1941 in two volumes by Macmillan in the UK and by

The Viking Press Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquire ...

in the US. The book is over 1,100 pages in modern editions and gives an account of Balkan history and

ethnography Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

during West's six-week trip to

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

in 1937. West's objective was "to show the past side by side with the present it created". Publication of the book coincided with the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

Invasion of Yugoslavia The invasion of Yugoslavia, also known as the April War or Operation 25, or ''Projekt 25'' was a German-led attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers which began on 6 April 1941 during World War II. The order for the invasion was p ...

, and West added a foreword highly praising the Yugoslavs for their brave defiance of Germany. The book's epigraph reads: "To my friends in Yugoslavia, who are now all dead or enslaved". The character of "Constantine" is supposedly based on

Stanislav Vinaver Stanislav Vinaver ( sr-Cyrl, Станислав Винавер; 1 March 1891 – 1 August 1955) was a Serbian writer, poet, translator and journalist. Vinaver was born to affluent Ashkenazi Jewish parents that had immigrated to Serbia from Polan ...

Anica Savić Rebac Anica Savić-Rebac ( sr-Cyrl, Аница Савић-Ребац; 4 October 1892 — 7 October 1953) was a Serbian writer, classical philologist, translator, professor at the University of Belgrade. She wrote a number of essays and books about Njego ...

, under the name of ''Milica'', appears not only as a new friend, but also as the intellectual guide who eventually reveals to Rebecca West the rituals which would lead the author to the title metaphor of her vision of the Balkans. Svetlana Slapšak
Anica Savić Rebac (1894 – 1953)
Gegenworte - Zeitschrift für den Disput über Wissen, Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Lemmens Verlag, Berlin 2010.

Plot summary

The book details the six-week journey West made, with her husband, to

in 1937. During the trip, West and her husband travelled to

Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capit ...

Dalmatia Dalmatia (; hr, Dalmacija ; it, Dalmazia; see #Name, names in other languages) is one of the four historical region, historical regions of Croatia, alongside Croatia proper, Slavonia, and Istria. Dalmatia is a narrow belt of the east shore of ...

Herzegovina Herzegovina ( or ; sh-Latn-Cyrl, Hercegovina, separator=" / ", Херцеговина, ) is the southern and smaller of two main geographical region of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being Bosnia. It has never had strictly defined geogra ...

Bosnia Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and He ...

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...

, Macedonia and

Montenegro ) , image_map = Europe-Montenegro.svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Podgorica , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , official_languages = M ...

Legacy

It made the

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

Modern Library The Modern Library is an American book publishing imprint and formerly the parent company of Random House. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, Modern Library became an ...

list of the best 100

non-fiction Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in imagination. Nonfiction is often associated with be ...

books of the 20th century. American writer

Larry McMurtry Larry Jeff McMurtry (June 3, 1936March 25, 2021) was an American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas.

says in an essay that "there are only a few great travel books. Rebecca West's ''Black Lamb and Grey Falcon'' is one." American writer Brian Hall says in his book, ''The Impossible Country'' that "after four years of writing...and 1,100 densely packed pages...she succeeded only in representing the Serb viewpoint."

Sources

* West, Rebecca, intr. Geoff Dyer, (2006). ''Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia''. Edinburgh.

References

External links

Review from enotes.co

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon ''Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia'' is a travel literature, travel book written by Dame Rebecca West, published in 1941 in two volumes by Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan in the UK and by The Viking Press in the US. The ...

Books about Yugoslavia 1937 in Yugoslavia {{travel-book-stub

Plot summary

Legacy

Sources

References

Further reading

External links