My War Gone By, I Miss It So

This harrowing memoir of the war in Bosnia shows humanity at its worst and best. A breathtaking feat of reportage, and an uncompromising look at the terrifyingly seductive power of war.

In 1993, Anthony Loyd hitchhiked to the Balkans hoping to become a journalist. Leaving behind him the legends of a distinguished military family, he wanted to see ‘a real war’ for himself. In Bosnia he found one.

The cruelty and chaos of the conflict both appalled and embraced him; the adrenalin lure of the action perhaps the loudest siren call of all. In the midst of the daily life-and-death struggle among Bosnia’s Serbs, Croats and Muslims, he was inspired by the extraordinary human fortitude he discovered. But returning home he found the void of peacetime too painful to bear, and so began a longstanding personal battle with drug abuse.

This harrowing account shows humanity at its worst and best, and is acknowledged as a classic of the genre. It is a breathtaking feat of reportage; an uncompromising look at the terrifyingly seductive power of war.

Just some of the praise for My War Gone By, I Miss It So:

‘An extraordinary memoir of the Bosnian War . . . savage and mercilessly readable . . . deserves a place alongside George Orwell, James Cameron and Nicholas Tomalin. It is as good as war reporting gets. I have nowhere read a more vivid account of frontline fear and survival. Forget the strategic overview. All war is local. It is about the ditch in which the soldier crouches and the ground on which he fights and maybe dies. The same applies to the war reporter. Anthony Loyd has been there and knows it’

Martin Bell, The Times

 

‘A truly exceptional book, one of those rare moments in journalistic writing when you can sit back and realise that you are in the presence of somebody willing to take the supreme risk for a writer, of extending their inner self. I finished reading Anthony Loyd’s account of his time in the Balkans and Chechnya only a few days ago and am still feeling the after-effects . . . I read his story of war and addiction (to conflict and heroin) with a sense of gratitude for the honesty and courage on every page’

Fergal Keane, Independent

 

‘Not since Michael Herr wrote Dispatches has any journalist written so persuasively about violence and its seductions in all of war’s minutiae of awful detail . . . an account that demystifies war and the war reporter and strips them bare before the reader’

Peter Beaumont, Observer

 

‘Undoubtedly the most powerful and immediate book to emerge from the Balkan horror of ethnic civil war . . . far more revealing and convincing than anything recounted to camera by visiting journalists and politicians’

Anthony Beevor, Daily Telegraph

Read an extract.

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