AustLit

'In July 1997 as part of a project comparing the destroyed places of several overseas areas with those of Australia, I visited Croatia with a friend who had been born near the town of Split on the Adriatic coast. I was overwhelmed by its history: the Croatians’ precise and bitter memories of the Second World War, the scores of historic monuments defaced or destroyed by succeeding generations of invaders, the former use of public signage to reinforce political ideology, the abrupt proximity of so many invasions and wars, the savagery of recent fighting, the intense passions about the communist past, the ancient rituals and cycles of peasant life in the little village of Cevoglave which seemed to have been let slip only yesterday. The emotional keystone of the trip was a day-long journey, escorted and guided by people from the Croatian Ministry of Culture through some of the regions of the recently pacified and physically devastated war zones.' (Introduction)