The Balkans and the West: Constructing the European Other, 1945û2003

This timely collection investigates how the Balkans and the West have constructed each other since 1945. Scholars from both sections of the continent explore a wide variety of fiction, film, journalism, travel writing and diplomatic records both to analyse Western European balkanism and to study Balkan representations of the West over the last fifty years. This dual emphasis exposes the representational practices that help to maintain a deeply divided Europe, and challenges the economic and political injustices that result.Despite the rise of postcolonialist analyses of global inequality, the current crises in many parts of South-East Europe have received scant attention in literary and cultural studies. The Balkans and the West addresses this deficiency. Ranging in focus from Serbian cinema to Romanian travel literature, from Western economic writings to Yugoslav fiction, and from public discourse in Albania to NATO's vast propaganda machine, the essays offer wide insight into representation and power in the contemporary European context.