Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Eleven hundred pages through the Balkans as fascism rose, part travelogue and part argument about why Europe was about to tear itself apart again.
West travelled through Yugoslavia in the late 1930s and produced eleven hundred pages that are part travelogue, part history, part argument about why Europe was about to destroy itself. Written as fascism rose, and still the most ambitious book by one of the century’s most precise minds.
Recommended by 1 Person
Maria Popova
The English writer Rebecca West (December 21, 1892–March 15, 1983) — one of the finest, subtlest, most passionate and precise minds I have ever read — traveled to the Balkans and recounted her encounter with those ancient cultures in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (public library), at the heart of which is a reckoning with the relationship between art and aliveness, between storytelling and resilience, between the things we make and the world we make.
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