Cordero negro, halcón gris

Part travelogue, part history, part love letter on a 1000-page scale, Rebecca West's Black Lamb & 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 & Fall of the Roman Empire crossed with Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. West visited Yugoslavia for the 1st 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 & waking, & 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's West following that strand of wool: thru countless historical digressions; thru winding narratives of battles, slavery & assassinations; thru Shakespeare & Augustine & into the very heart of human frailty. Prologue Journey Croatia Dalmatia Expedition Herzegovina Bosnia Serbia Macedonia Old Serbia Montenegro Epilogue Bibliographical Note Index