Lost World: A Bosnian Family History

Twenty years after the 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Alfred van Cleef travels again to Prijedor, where another mass grave was discovered at the end of 2013. That the war leaves lasting traces is also evident from his new conversations with the Berberovi brothers.

Two of the brothers survived the Keraterm and Omarska concentration camps. Nothing had been heard of the third for a long time when Van Cleef went looking for him in 1993, right through the lines. Now Van Cleef travels through Bosnia again and discovers in the Swedish Uddevalla that the war has claimed a victim years later. What influence does the Bosnian war have on the survivors, and on their now adult children?

Through the eyes of the brothers and their family members, who have spread out across Europe as refugees, we experience the war in Bosnia and its aftermath up close. Everyone seems to deal with the traumatic past differently: one has become quiet and closed, the other angry and bitter. 'It's like a long, bad dream,' says Senad in accentless Dutch. 'I don't understand my life.'

Lost World is a gripping story of a Bosnian family, a universal story about the impact of war on people's lives. The pain, the fear, the sorrow and the difficult choices that have to be made will not leave any reader unmoved.