As a columnist fo r Oslobodenje (Sarajevo's acclaimed daily newspaper), Gojko Beric gained an international reputation fo r his grimly ironic yet passionate writing fr om the city under siege. Since then, as the eloquent se lection of his recent writing demonstrates, he has continued to cast an unsparing gaze on the miseries a nd hypocrisies besetting postwar Bosnia, as well as its Croatian a nd Serbian neighbours. Mingling recollections of his country's bitter past with comments on its bitter present, Letters to the Celestial Serbs contains many of the most memo r able pages ever penned on wartime a nd postwar Bosnia, of which his extended essay on the histo r ical role of Alija Izetbegovic is exemplary.

Compelled by events -a nd western policy- to confront the question 'am I a Serb?', Beric never doubted that the real issues in Bosnia were political a nd ethical, not 'ethnic'. 'all these years, serb nationalists have been sending me insulting letters: Will I ever stop saying that the serbs are nit to blame fo r the war, stop talking about Serbian fascism a nd Serb atrocities? No, I won't.'