Balkanology  ::  Explore Southeast Europe

Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Bradt Travel Guide  (4th edition published April 2013) - Tim Clancy

Recommended if your trip entails more than the usual quick circuit of Sarajevo and Mostar, as it covers many of the country's smaller towns and less well-known attractions.

Bosnia and Herzegovina in Your Hands  (1st edition published March 2014) - Jorg Heeskens

I haven't seen this book, but the same publisher's "Serbia in Your Hands" is a useful and attractively produced guide so I would certainly consider this if I was planning a trip to Bosnia.

A guided journey through Herzegovina  (1st edition published Sep 2005) - Tim Clancy and Willem van Eekelen

This book is published in Bosnia by the Buybook company. One of the authors is also the writer of the Bradt Guide, so a certain amount of overlap can be expected. I haven't used this book but I did glance at it in a bookshop. It appears to have quite a lot of extra detail compared to the Bradt Guide, as you would expect given that it covers a much smaller area, but as it was published in 2005 is is naturally less up to date.

A guided journey through Sarejevo and the surrounding area  (1st edition published Sep 2005) - Tim Clancy and Willem van Eekelen

See the comment on A journey through Herzegovina.

A guided journey through Central and North Bosnia  (1st edition published Sep 2005) - Tim Clancy and Willem van Eekelen

See the comment on A journey through Herzegovina.

Forgotten Beauty: A Hiker's Guide to Bosnia  (1st edition published March 2005) - Matias Gomez

Descriptions of hikes to all of BiH's major 2000 metre peaks plus a number of other hikes in and around Sarajevo. Includes maps and safety information.

Sarajevo In Your Pocket

This practical city guide can be browsed online or downloaded in PDF format. A guide to Banja Luka is also available.

The Bridge over the Drina - Ivo Andrić

Many and many of us have sat there, head in hands, leaning on the well-cut smooth stone, watching the eternal play of light on the mountains and the clouds in the sky, and have unravelled the threads of our small-town destinies, eternally the same yet eternally tangled in some new manner.

This is probably the most widely read novel by any author from the Balkans. It describes the life of a small Bosnian town over several centuries. The characters are fictional, but the town of Višegrad is real, and the bridge still exists. The author's prestige as a Nobel laureate has contributed to a tendency to interpret the novel for political ends. Does it describe the inevitable conflicts arising from the presence of different religious groups in the same area? Or does it show that these groups can coexist peacefully until tensions are introduced by outside influences? Read it and decide for yourself.

Sarajevo Marlboro - Miljenko Jergović

The rotten jazz mixed with beer and with the grass in your lungs and the sound of the muezzin became a way of avoiding reality, of floating over the streets of Sarajevo and the muddy yellow waters of the Miljacka.

A collection of short stories inspired by Sarajevo under siege.

Bosnia: A Cultural History - Ivan Lovrenović

The essence of Bosnian cultural heritage is the complexity of its civilization, the simultaneity of one shared and three separate traditions. Not to see, or not to want to see, any one member of this complicated combination means consenting to the impoverishment of one's own being.

This is a refreshing change from books that focus on Bosnia as a doomed country, instead concentrating on its rich cultural and artistic heritage. Rather than telling a story of separate ethnic groups, Lovrenović sees the interactions between these groups as a fundamental part of the Bosnian identity. It's a fairly expensive book but it is handsomely produced.

Bosnia: A Short History - Noel Malcolm