Black lamb and grey falcon (original 1942; edition 2007)

Mentioned in The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women by Harriet Rubin.

Part travelogue, part history, part love letter on a thousand-page scale, Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a genre-bending masterwork written in elegant prose. But what makes it so unlikely to be confused with any other book of history, politics, or culture--with, in fact, any other book--is its unashamed depth of feeling: think The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire crossed with Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. West visited Yugoslavia for the first time in 1936. What she saw there affected her so much that she had to return--partly, she writes, because it most resembled "the country I have always seen between sleeping and waking," and partly because "it was like picking up a strand of wool that would lead me out of a labyrinth in which, to my surprise, I had found myself immured." Black Lamb is the chronicle of her travels, but above all it is West following that strand of wool: through countless historical digressions; through winding narratives of battles, slavery, and assassinations; through Shakespeare and Augustine and into the very heart of human frailty.

West wrote on the brink of World War II, when she was "already convinced of the inevitability of the second Anglo-German war." The resulting book is colored by that impending conflict, and by West's search for universals amid the complex particulars of Balkan history. In the end, she saw the region's doom--and our own--in a double infatuation with sacrifice, the "black lamb and grey falcon" of her title. It's the story of Abraham and Isaac without the last-minute reprieve: those who hate are all too ready to martyr the innocent in order to procure their own advantage, and the innocent themselves are all too eager to be martyred. To West, in 1941, "the whole world is a vast Kossovo, an abominable blood-logged plain." Unfortunately, little has happened since then to prove her wrong. --Mary Park

Review

A masterpiece . . . as astonishing in its range, in the subtlety and power of its judgment, as it is brilliant in expression. (_The Times_, London)

Surely one of the great books of our century. (Diana Trilling)

Rebecca West’s magnum opus . . . one of the great books of our time. (Clifton Fadiman, The New Yorker)

To finish this immense book, a doorstop several times over at a whopping 1181 densely written and small printed pages which is part travelogue, history, with plenty of philosophical musings thrown in, require a good amount of persistence.

The book, hailed as West's masterpiece and considered one of the greatest books of the 20th century, chronicles a 6-week journey that she and her husband made in the late 1930s through the ex-Yugoslavia and provides a mosaic of country and town life in this troubled region. She provides a sweeping account of its history and politics, and while critics question the accuracy of some information, it gives us outsiders a good starting place to explore Balkan history. In general, she keeps a highly romanticized view of the peoples, and amidst some captivating prose and interesting insights, a degree of intolerance shows through.She is especially biased towards the Serbs, termed by some reviewers as her fascination over their "noble savage" character. The Slavs are an intensely nationalistic people, and West is able to depict this very well, and how in history this has served them two ways, to defeat their common oppressor, the Turks, and later on, to divide them along religious lines. West tells us why all these centuries, from the time of the Ottoman conquest, this region has always been volatile, and that their revolts and eventual victory against the Ottoman empire is not just a local or even regional achievement, but meant the defense of Western civilization against the East -- they fought for Europe's very existence.

West evokes picturesque and dramatic landscape. Here, she does not exaggerate, as I saw this for myself when I traveled to parts of the region last summer. Interestingly, nothing much seems to have changed in the countryside --- the wars that rocked the region after West wrote this book that resulted in its isolation from modernizing influences, has kept it like this. In every place she visits, she provides a historical context and some analysis, some accounts of which are quite riveting, two of which, for me, stand out -- the assassination of Prince Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo (which triggered WWI), and the tumultuous reigns of the Serbian kings.

What is tiresome in this book is that West loves to go rambling on what seems at first a philosophical discourse but after a while, turns into some mystical reflections. I find this surprising --- she appears to be very rational and intellectual in her initial approach to exploring the story and the mindset of these peoples, but in trying to understand them, she somehow imbues mystical qualities to events and characters. In any case, she can go on and on, and it is nothing but mind-numbing. She also becomes quite redundant and predictable in her reactions and insights, and at times, quite narrow-minded (the meaning and her interpretation of the symbolism of the book's title, for one). What I also find lacking here, is her lack of interaction with the locals. She had a very knowledgeable guide, and got to meet important political and religious personages, but all the views she got were from the elite. Would it have mattered if she had had a serious conversation with one of those "noble savages" that she idealizes? I guess so... it would have rendered her observations a little more authentic, a little more engaged, and not merely views of the typical well-to-do, foreign tourist who obviously delighted in the exotic and strange ways of these people but who prefers to be detached anyway.

West wrote this book for 5 years, in the period when the rumbling of the imminent war was getting louder and closer. She provides in the Epilogue what i consider in the book to be her most incisive analysis, this time of the events that were sweeping Europe, and how again Yugoslavia would be drawn into the maelstrom.

In any case, this book is an experience to read. There is much to digest here, so it's best to be read in an unhurried way. Be prepared to be delighted, to be disturbed, to be surprised, to be entertained, to be informed, and also to question, to wonder, to understand --- a book which does this and more deserves to be read at least once. ( )

Possibly the most complete travel account ever written of a single trip through Eastern Europe. Dame Rebecca writes with great passion and understanding of the people, history and the anguish facing the Yugoslavs with the coming of the Hitlerzeit.
Filled with unforgettable characters, all the more remarkable because they are not characters, but actual people. It shows a lost way of a slower paced life in the very end of the 30s as the Yugoslav prepares for another round of warfare and ethnic tensions not merely under the surface as Croats/Serbs/Bosnians/Catholics/Orthodox/Muslims/Jews all attempt to make a go of their new state.

This book is a long, complex, deeply ambiguous, genre-straddling magnum opus that is, at least to my mind, highly resistant to easy classification. Because of that, I almost don't know how to begin reviewing it.

This book seems to inspire somewhat of a love/hate relationship among readers. On one hand, the author's vivid and excellent writing combined with her tendency to go off on long, involved tangents related to history, art history, religious history, etc., make the book unique. On the other hand, it can't be denied that the book is not exactly objective.

I think the thing that needs to be kept in mind with this book is that it is not objective history. It's what might be a called a historical travelogue - while this book is in some ways about the history of the former Yugoslavia, this book is more profoundly about what it is that Rebecca West found in pre-WW2 Yugoslavia. A large part of what called to her in Yugoslavia, what made her fall in love with Yugoslavia, was the history - or at least her interpretation thereof. I think "interpretation" is really the key word here - this book is a deeply personal interpretation of the history of the West Balkans that reflects both a great degree of historical knowledge and a lack of desire to be a historian.

I think this book is wonderful and unique -- but anyone who confuses this book with an objective historical resource is grievously wrong. The compelling nature of Rebecca West's writing naturally gets readers interested in the region - but the necessary next step is to channel that interest into more serious readings about the history of the former Yugoslavia. This was Robert Kaplan's mistake, to be sure, and he should have known better. The closest analogy I can think of is perhaps taking Tocqueville for a textbook of American history. Tocqueville, though, was more actively objective in his approach to America than West was towards the former Yugoslavia. Ultimately though, I think the lack of objectivity doesn't make the book any less worthwhile - it just means that readers need to be aware of what this book is and what it isn't.

(A) ( )