SARAJEVO/TIRANA/SKOPJE - Writer and historian Irene van der Linde and documentary photographer Nicole Segers travel in the footsteps of the British writer Rebecca West through former Yugoslavia and Albania. With West's magnum opus Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942) in their hands, they go in search of the meaning of the new borders in the Balkans.
In Blood and Honey (Bloed en honing), Van der Linde and Segers travel over quiet roads, arid plateaus, through desolate villages and dark rock gorges. They visit cities with magical names like Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Skopje, Ohrid and Tirana. They show the world of ordinary people with an extraordinary history. People who dream, fight, fear, struggle with their fate. As in a polyphonic choir they tell about their lives. Blood and Honey is an innovative and unique combination of literary non-fiction and documentary photography.
Blood and honey is about unity and separation. About the sobering reality of nationalism put into practice. About hope and disappointment, passion and lethargy. About daily worries and geopolitical forces. About the role of the past in the present. About the fragmentation of a region, a danger that also threatens societies elsewhere in Europe.
Don't think that it won't happen, that there can't be war. The world in which you live, which you take for granted, can be over in one fell swoop. Nobody believed it, nor did we, but it happened anyway,' says historian Jesenko Galijašević at his home in Sarajevo.
Photo: © Nicole Segers
BOOK (in Dutch)
- Title: Bloed en honing
Subtitle: Ontmoetingen op de grenzen van de Balkan
Language: Dutch
Bindwijze: Hardcover
Date of pulication: 24/10/2020
Number of pages: 680
Publisher: Boom
EAN: 9789024432127
PRE-PUBLICATION (In Dutch)
- 'We waren allemaal Joegoslaven', De Groene Amsterdammer, 22/10/2020.
PRESS COVERAGE
- Bloed en honing; een reis door voormalig Joegoslavië, De Groene Amsterdammer Podcast, 22/10/2020.
