The SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, UK, December 5th, 1999
Books of the Year
by Noel Malcolm

Book of the Year: "let me steer clear of the high-profile blockbusters and recommend an extraordinary but under-reviewed book, The Killing Days, by Kemal Pervanic (Blake Publishing). Pervanic recounts his experiences in 1992 in Omarska, one of the worst of the Bosnian death-camps. A quiet-toned book, thoughtful but simply factual, and almost unbearably moving."

The ECONOMIST, UK, (excerpts) November 20th 1999

"The human consequences of the most recent burst of Balkan chauvinism have been described in a short, stark and moving memoir by a young Bosnian Muslim, Kemal Pervanic. His carefree life as an under-employed 24-year-old in a Balkan village came to an abrupt end in May 1992, when the Serbs’ ethnic cleansing swept through northern Bosnia.

With sensitivity, lightness of touch and odd flashes of humour, he describes both the squalor of the two camps where he was incarcerated, and the human dilemmas facing both captive and captor. Many of his tormentors are former classmates, suddenly full of the fears and hatreds which the communism has failed to uproot.

Mr Pervanic provides a microcosm of the Bosnian war as it affected ordinary people..."