One Morning In Sarajevo by David James Smith
This historical account of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is every bit as gripping as The Day of the Jackal. Using newly available sources and older material, David James Smith brilliantly reinvestigates and reconstructs the events which subsequently determined the shape of the twentieth century. Young Gavrilo Princip arrived at the Vlajnic pastry shop in Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina on the morning of 28 June 1914. He was greeted by his fellow conspirators in the plot to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The Archduke, next in the Habsburg line to succeed his elderly uncle, Franz Joseph, as Emperor of Austria, was beginning a state visit to Sarajevo later that morning with his wife Sophie. Ferdinand was not a very popular character, not even in Austria, not even at his own court where he was widely thought of as bad-tempered and arrogant and perhaps even deranged. To the young students he embodied everything they loathed about imperial oppression. They planned to kill him at about 11 o'clock as he paraded down Appel Quay to the town hall in his open top car. Weighed down by its historical burden, buried under mounds of analysis and portentous commentary, the story of the assassins and the assassination has been lost. David James Smith creates a narrative that takes place in one day, interweaved with the build-up to the assassination, focusing for the first time on the fine detail of the plot and the characters of those involved. What happened in those few hours - leading as it did to the First and Second World Wars - is as compelling as any thriller.
"David James Smith's achievement is to contextualise the conspiracy.. an informed and nuanced account" -- Mark Thwaite SUNDAY TIMES "this outstanding new account of events and characters... is the most comprehensive study of the assassination yet publishing in English" -- James Ferguson THE SPECTATOR "He (David) is to be congratulated on a fine piece of political and literary detective work, which held this reader enthralled" -- Paul Routledge Tribune Christmas Recommendation: "Everyone knows the outcome yet that doesn't prevent David James Smith's detailed reconstruction of a day that changed history" -- Eileen Battersby IRISH TIMES
David James Smith was born in 1956 and has been a journalist all his working life. He writes for the Sunday Times Magazine and Esquire.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780297851448 |
| ISBN 10 | 0297851446 |
| Title | One Morning In Sarajevo |
| Author | David James Smith |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Orion Publishing Co |
| Year published | 2008-06-12 |
| Number of pages | 336 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |