This is a powerful story set during the Bosnian War and follows three characters - a British doctor on a mission to rescue a sick child; an American journalist trying to save his reputation; and a young Bosnian woman seeing refuge in Sarajevo.
This is a tense and powerful story, set during very difficult times. Some of this is hard to read, as the situation there was pretty appalling, but is is compelling non-the-less.

This book is the story of a tense few days spent in the besieged city of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, centred around a young British doctor who has been sent there to evacuate a seriously ill child. Through her experiences and the people she meets the reader is drawn into the life of the city and into a gripping narrative that had me feeling nervous and anxious the whole way through. This is one of the most nerve-wracking books I have ever read. The siege is vividly portrayed in all its horror. The sense of danger, the sheer unpredictability of where that bullet is going to come from, the cold, the hunger, the dirt, the destruction, the devastation. The author spent time in the area reporting on the war and was in fact seriously wounded in an attack. This gives him an authority that few other novelists can have and the authenticity of his narrative is never in doubt. His descriptions of this brutal, senseless conflict make for some very upsetting and disturbing reading, and the author is to be congratulated for his handling of the tragedy, never glamorising it, or making melodrama out of drama, but conveying what it was really like during those dreadful years.