But if you want some background feeling for the history behind modern events in the Balkans I suggest you read 'The Bridge Over the Drina' by Ivo Andric - a classic. Andric won the Nobel Prize for Literature (early 60s, I believe?), and this work was one of the main reasons for that success.

Rather than simply dismissing Milosevic as some genocidal maniac, I think it best to consider that he had aims which, through a form of 'power-play' not unheard of in other 'civilized' nations, he felt he might just achieve. Namely; out of the fragmentation of Yugoslavia to set-up a Greater Serbia by way of land-grabs in parts of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina etc. Having the bulk of the former Yugoslav armed forces at his disposal he had the stronger hand in any ensuing conflict. Serb militias were set-up in Bosnia and these, supported by Milosevic and the Serb state (still styling itself, 'Yugoslavia') held the Bosnia-Herzegovina capital, Sarajevo, under a horrific siege.

The slaughter of the 8,000 took place in Srebinica, not Sarajevo. Other atrocities took place (notably by Croats on Serbs) but international opinion is pretty much universal in acknowledging that Bosnia was blameless in this; in so far as it was defending its state from external forces inciting civil unrest for the purposes of destabilising and thereby destroying the state.

But read Andric anyway, just for the pure joy of the writing!

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."