Bosnian War and Siege of Sarajevo

The Bosnian War followed the breakup of Yugoslavia and involved Bosniak, Serb and Croat political and military forces, with mass displacement, siege warfare, ethnic cleansing and international intervention. Sarajevo endured one of the longest sieges of a modern capital.

The siege mattered not only as a military and humanitarian crisis but also as an assault on civic life, memory and cultural institutions. Libraries, museums, archives and neighbourhoods became part of the conflict’s symbolic and practical violence.

People of the Book opens in the aftermath of this war, when the Sarajevo Haggadah’s preservation becomes a route into deeper histories of survival.