In July 1995 approximately 7,000 Muslim men, women, and children died at Serbian hands in and around the old Bosnian mining town of Srebenica. It was the largest mass execution in Europe since the Nazi era; a stunning failure for the United Nations and the Western powers; and the grim watershed that led, finally, to massive NATO air strikes and the current fragile peace. How and why this shocking act of genocide was allowed to take place is still imperfectly understood.

Blood and Vengeance puts a human face on the grim statistics and tangled politics of this event. Through the odyssey of one Muslim family, the Celiks of the remote mountain town of Kupusovici, journalist Chuck Sudetic tells the epic and tragic story of a people and a nation. His narrative reaches as far back as the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where the Turks conquered the Serbs, and unfolds with sweeping and inexorable power toward the Celiks' rendezvous with history in the so-called "safe area" of Srebenica. Not since The Killing Fields has as powerful a nonfiction tale of spinelessness, savagery, and heroic survival been told. Here is a book as sweeping and powerful as a panoramic, historical painting, yet with the heartbreaking intimacy of a family snapshot. Even readers who may once have felt that the Bosnian War was beyond comprehension will find themselves in its masterful grip.