They Would Never Hurt a Fly War Criminals on Trial in The Hague

In her novel S., Slavenka Drakulic´ explored the horror of genocide and the lives that were ripped apart during the Bosnian conflict of the early 1990s. Now, in They Would Never Hurt a Fly, she confronts one of the consequences of that war—the prisoners being tried at The Hague for their war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.During that terrible and bloody clash, countless humans were tortured, raped, and murdered—unspeakable acts committed in the name of ethnic cleansing” and all authorized by the government. Drakulic´ introduces readers to the accused—from the infamous to the unknown to the unquestionably guilty, including former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic´—seeking to understand the people behind the horrific crimes. She asserts that the trials are important not just because of the dead, but also because of the living. In the end,” she writes about the war criminals, what matters... is one single important question: what would I do in their situation?”

Slavenka Drakulic was born in Croatia in 1949. The author of several works of nonfiction and novels, she has written for The New York Times, The Nation, The New Republic, and numerous publications around the world.