A Village Destroyed, May 14, 1999

Book excerpt: "Seldom does a book take readers so powerfully inside war crimes--both into the pain of the victims and, even more chilling, into the minds of the perpetrators. In a Washington so timid about supporting the international institutions designed to prevent such horrors, this book should be mandatory reading."--Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost: a Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa "This searing documentary takes those large abstractions--ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity--and confronts us with the anguishing reality: the faces of the alleged killers and their victims, stories of shattered families, desolation of a ruined community. The book is also a stunning example of careful, determined pursuit of evidence by frontline human rights workers, our best hope for accountability and justice in the wake of systematic evil. This unparalleled account thus records the worst--and the best--of human capacities."--H. Jack Geiger, M.D., founding member and past president of Physicians for Human Rights "Marshalling precision in the face of obfuscation, clarity in the face of desolation, and lucidity in the face of oblivion, the authors and creators of A Village Destroyed have somehow managed to meld witness and majesty. Truth is beauty--sometimes the only solace left to us--and this is a harrowingly beautiful book."--Lawrence Weschler, author of A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers "Gilles Peress's photographs take us where we have never gone before: into the killing zones of Kosovo where ethnic Albanians were tortured, executed, robbed, and driven from the land. Here is an astounding record that will make it impossible for us to say that we never knew what happened in Kosovo or how."--Gloria Emerson, author of Gaza: A Year in the Intifada "A Village Destroyed is a very important book, offering a revealing examination of how contemporary human rights investigations and international efforts to do justice are transforming the context in which great crimes are committed."--Aryeh Neier, President of the Open Society Institute "By some of the best investigators and reporters in the human rights movement, A Village Destroyed helps comfort the afflicted by letting them speak in their own voices. Let us hope it also serves to afflict the comforted."--Juan E. Mendez, Vice-President, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights "This is a groundbreaking work. It is the anatomy of a crime: the destruction of a village. The photographs and witness accounts are of astounding power. The book is crucial for anyone who wants to know what happened in Kosovo."--Laura Silber, co-author of Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation