Searching for Sofia

From journalist John Nadler comes a real-life Romeo and Juliet story set in war-torn Kosovo.

Nadler has stumbled upon a bitter epic romance in the ashes of inter-ethnic strife in the former Yugoslavia. The cast: a pair of star-cross’d lovers, a young Kosovar man and a Serb woman; the girl’s father, a local militiaman who is determined to crush the relationship; and a war correspondent in the role of Friar Lawrence, entrusted with the commission of reuniting the lovers.

Gjorg escapes the slaughter of his village by feigning death and fleeing while Serb troops invade his town. His fiancée Sofia disappears — whisked away to Serbia, Gjorg believes, by her father, who is later implicated in a massacre. Gjorg, languishing in nato-held Kosovo, despairs of ever seeing his Sofia again. Until Nadler agrees to help find her.

Always just a step behind, Nadler follows Sofia’s trail from her village through the flashpoints and tinderboxes of the Balkans: Mitrovica, the Presovo Valley, Macedonia, and, finally, Belgrade. He witnesses the sickening decay of Yugoslavia — once a dynamic, cosmopolitan and prosperous nation — manifested in the endemic suspicion, the burnt and shell-pocked buildings, the ravaged communities, and the broken lives.

Searching for Sofia is a Balkan odyssey, a quest through dangerous terrain for an ever-elusive goal, a campaign for justice and, ultimately, an exploration, through the eyes of its victims, of the madness of internecine war.