Summary Of The Bosnia List By Kenan Trebincevic

The Bosnia List is a memoir written by Kenan Trebincevic in collaboration with Susan Shapiro. The book is written to jump back and forth between the life of Kenan at age 9 in 1992 during the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and his life in America at age 30 almost twenty years later. The description of his life in Bosnia shows the great suffering Kenan and his family went through as well as the suffering other Muslims in the area. When the Trebincevic’s eventually make it out of Bosnia, their life doesn’t turn around immediately. They still had to learn to assimilate into different cultures, and find ways to make enough money to survive while still facing controversy over their race and religion. The description of his life twenty years later shows how the war still affects his daily life, and his thirst for vengeance. Kenan recounts in the book, “I hated being a broke, foreign, high school freshman,” (page 213). Also, it

Serbian forces backed by their leader, Milosevic, and the predominantly Serbian Yugoslavian army launched attacks on Bosnian towns. The Bosnian government tried to defend their territory with some help from the Croatian army, but Serbians controlled nearly three-quarters of the country by 1993. The result of the war was the division of Bosnia between a Croat-Bosniak federation and a Serb republic in 1995. However, the effects of the war lingered on, and there are many years of hostility that follow. The history of the time period greatly affects the book, since it is primarily based on the events that occurred during the war. The life of Kenan and his family took a major turn after the start of the war. The Trebincevic’s were well-known for good reasons. Kenan’s father was known as “the unofficial mayor of Brčko” and was highly respected by people of all ethnicities before the war. His reputation and connections are what kept them