Madness Visible - Janine di Giovanni

As a senior foreign correspondent for The Times of London, Janine di Giovanni was a firsthand witness to the brutal and protracted break-up of Yugoslavia. With unflinching sensitivity, Madness Visible follows the arc of the wars in the Balkans through the experience of those caught up in them: soldiers numbed by the atrocities they commit, women driven to despair by their life in paramilitary rape camps, civilians (di Giovanni among them) caught in bombing raids of uncertain origin, babies murdered in hate-induced rage.

Di Giovanni's searing memoir examines the turmoil of the Balkans in acute detail, and uncovers the motives of the leaders who created hell on earth; it raises challenging questions about ethnic conflict and the responsibilities of foreign governments in times of mass murder. Perceptive and compelling, this unique work of reportage from the physical and psychological front lines makes the madness of war wholly visible.

Janine di Giovanni is a senior foreign correspondent for The Times of London and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. She is the recipient of a 2000 National Magazine Award for her reporting from the Balkans, two Amnesty International awards for war reporting from Sierra Leone and Kosovo, and Granada Television's Foreign Correspondent of the Year award for being one of the few reporters to witness the fall of Grozny, Chechnya. She has been the focus of an award-winning documentary about women war correspondents, No Man's Land. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she received an M.F.A. in fiction. She lives in Paris with her husband, the French reporter Bruno Girodon, and their baby son, Luca.