I’m surprised the book achieved this acclaim since I found it worthy, heartfelt and uncomplicated. That’s damning the book with faint praise.

The book is marked as literary fiction but it is more of a commercial historical fiction. This didn’t make any difference to me this time but to those who expect a book to cater to its advertised genre, this could be a minor problem. What makes this book a 5 for me is the offering of ideas for solutions. It does more than identify and describe challenges. Brown is creative. Content Consideration: If you are negatively affected by the coverage of conditions in Ukraine, you might need to know that some content in this book is similar. The author has researched her book well and it shows in the detailed and precise penning of incidents and feelings.

This is the third book in my quest to read all of the shortlisted books for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction. However, it was more of the 10,000-foot view of how various systems work together to create the current mess and what it would take to solve it. In her twenties, when she returned home from her six years in Paris and Belgrade, she realised she couldn't live anywhere else. And now, she wants to stay in the city she loves as it's shaken, to see things through. This book will be published on the 30th anniversary of the Siege of Sarajevo. It’s an informative novel allowing readers to develop compassion for refugees and those who seek asylum today.

The siege of Sarajevo is told through the eyes of Serbian artist, Zora Kocovic,as she witnesses her city crumble from the shelling of snipers in the mountains surrounding Sarajevo. Her apartment building, art studio (which sits above the library), are obliterated by the incessant bombing. The most devastating results in the death of innocent children and adults murdered while attempting to lead their “normal” and ordinary lives. I went to Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro on holidays in May 2006, accidentally stumbling on an independence referendum in the latter, when it seceded from Serbia. Gunshots and fireworks broke out in the capital Podgerica in jubilant scenes that I will never forget. Amongst the horror and deprivation, there are snatched moments of happiness: a shared meal assembled from scraps of food, the telling of stories around a makeshift fire, a ‘bring your own art’ exhibition, the warmth of another body next to yours. The possibility of making a perilous escape from the city brings Zora hope that she might be reunited with her family but also a feeling of guilt for others left behind.War couldn’t happen here in Sarajevo. Not here where everyone loved each other, she’d told herself with the simplicity of a child.” This is all pleasant enough but it doesn’t stir the blood. Ironically I rarely felt any visceral sense of the fear that would have been prevalent as the city ran out of supplies. Putting Baltimore under a microscope, Brown looks closely at the causes of segregation, many of which exist in current legislation and regulatory policy despite the common belief that overtly racist policies are a thing of the past. Drawing on social science research, policy analysis, and archival materials, Brown reveals the long history of racial segregation's impact on health, from toxic pollution to police brutality. Beginning with an analysis of the current political moment, Brown delves into how Baltimore's history influenced actions in sister cities like St. Louis and Cleveland, as well as its adoption of increasingly oppressive techniques from cities like Chicago. She loves Sarajevo. She knows all its alleys and courtyards, all its scents and sounds—the way the light falls at the end of their street in wintertime, the rattle of the tram, the blowsy roses that bloom each June in the mosque gardens, the plums and fogs in the autumn, the ponderous old men playing chess in the cafés, the mahalas—the old neighbourhoods—that radiate from the centre like the spiral of a snail’s shell.