Physical description

Glossary, maps, p.236.

Publication type

non-fiction

Summary

Winchester travels in a scimitar-shaped journey through Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegreo, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greece to Turkey. He names his route the Fracture Zone, because this locale marks not only the meeting of two vast continental tectonic plates, perpetrators of geological chaos, but also the uneasy boundary between two great historical empires, the Hapsburg and the Ottoman." "The Fracture Zone weaves together history, travel and political perspective with the personal testaments of ordinary and extraordinary people. In this record of history, hatred and ruin, Simon Winchester details the conditions under which the area's refuges now live against a background of ancient political and spiritual struggle