He has this vague idea that he may get a job as a journalist or a photographer while over there, but the goal is to experience war. But as a journalist/photographer (he's never clear about what, if anything, he's doing work-wise), when he gets his chance to actually kill a Serb, he doesn't. Photographer Anthony Lloyd captures this perplexing obsession in the brilliant My War Gone By, I Miss It So. As for his hope that war would be "the key to understanding so much more," maybe before he set off he should have listened to Frank Zappa's warning: "Understanding is the booby prize of life.

Through this window, the reader sees and attempts to grasp the emotional turmoil that Loyd struggles through as his mind attempts to understand and catalog the brutalities of humanity against itself.It’s either one or the other – war or oblivion – he simply cannot cope with the peaceful, civilian life going on around him. You share the horror and frustration and despair at the depths if depravity and evil human beings can sink to. These were confused moments, though once in place it took the fighters only seconds to understand the full horror unfolding before their eyes. I have always been frustrated and furious at the UN's handling of the Balkan wars and this book takes you there.

The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. When away from home, one often thinks of nothing else but home while simultaneously being pulled into a romance with the emotions found in combat. On the surface, Anthony Loyd has written a book about the Bosnian war, but as the pages flicker by it doesn’t take long to realise that this book is a confession. I could leer and posture as much as anyone else, roll my shoulders and swagger through stories of megadeath, murder and mayhem; and I could get angry about the poignant tragedy of it all. There's bloodred-vivid descriptions of the fighting, sure, but there's also the dark poetic insight of a man who's seen humanity at its worst.

A real glimpse at what can happen to an ordinary man in an extraordinary place and an insight into some of the guilty passions that war should not, but does, create. Anthony Loyd's first book is a vivid, haunting account of the war in Bosnia from 1993 to 1996, from where he reported for the Daily Telegraph and then the Times as a special correspondent.