I think I was initially drawn to this book simply because it appeared fat, plain, and unassuming on the bookstore shelf. It still maintains its plump and unadorned exterior, but at least it now finds itself being occasionally perused and enjoyed on my own bookshelf.

West's prejudices are quite evident (being pro-Yugoslavia and pro-Serb), which generally means that readers can take them into account as they engage with the text.

Some of her attitudes seem overly simplistic, perhaps even naive. For example, her portrayal of the young and dynamic Serb states throughout history, in contrast to the flabby and lethargic Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Maybe this book is best understood as a form of propaganda, or rather, as expressing a distinct political view during a very specific period in time - the lead-up to the Second World War. In her eyes, Yugoslavia is the real deal, while Mussolini's Italy is merely a flabby imitation. It is also seen as a kind of answer to the 1930s, being authoritative, masculine, and virile, a country that is firmly rooted in its past yet also looking forward with confidence.

She takes readers on a journey through both time and space as she leads us across 1930s Yugoslavia. In Sarajevo, she vividly describes the accidental assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, while also delving into his troubled relationship with the Imperial court and showing us the mass organized slaughter of his hunting parties. This serves as a visual counterpoint to both his own assassination and that of the First World War. She guides us through the series of battles fought on the Kosovo plain and across the hard lands of Dalmatia, which have been stripped bare by foreign occupiers, via the city of Split that has grown up within the remains of Diocletian's palace. In Belgrade, we witness the alternation of Karageorges and Obrenovitchs, who struggled to build a polity under the Ottomans. But at the same time, she shows us a society in transition, with references to changing habits and traditions.

However, all of this occurs within the context of the people she meets and travels with, much of which is humorous, or at least would be humorous if we weren't aware of what was about to happen in this country. In fact, the book concludes with the people of Marseilles, having heard of Yugoslavia's resistance to Hitler, throwing flowers on the grave of King Alexander.

This is an extremely empathetic travel book and a rich introduction to the region. Although it may be best enjoyed with a more critical eye to balance out the author's biases. In any case, it is a masterwork of British travel writing, transcending that genre and serving as a cultural and historical appreciation of a region, colored by the author's disenchantment with late imperial Britain and the politics of the 1930s.

In awarding 5 stars to Dame Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, I am acknowledging her for penning a book that surpasses expectations. Her work clarifies numerous aspects, some of which only became evident long after her passing. Her prose oscillates between being overly flowery and poetic to that of a classic history professor. Her inclination to ascribe the most abstract and poetic meanings to everything, from the weather to the expression of a nearly starving local, can be exasperating. Nevertheless, there is a sufficient amount of the dispassionate reporter, the erudite professor, and the knowledgeable travel guide to keep me engaged, even as the length of the read becomes somewhat burdensome.

In over 1100 pages, Dame West guides us through the diverse nations and peoples that then composed the newly formed Yugoslavia. She is clearly in favor of Yugoslavia and the Slavic people, but less so about the Turks (Muslims). She respects their beliefs and contends that they are fine as long as they remain in their own countries. She has little tolerance for the Austrians and essentially attributes all the bad things to the Germans, or at least the subset of Germans who were on the verge of initiating World War II. And so it continues through the catalogue of ethnicities and nationalities in this crowded region of Europe. If you have forgotten the term Balkanization or the reason it was coined, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon makes the case.

She has an educated appreciation of architecture and just enough language skills, along with at least one well-connected friendly and important local, to provide her readers with access to the many pressures and opinions that were simmering beneath the newly hoisted flag of Yugoslavia.

Primarily, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a travelogue as Dame West, her European Banker husband, and their guide - the poet friend and government officer, Constantine - traverse the country. Together, they mostly travel by car and train. The year is 1938, and this is her second such visit. The publication date of 1941 makes her dedication deeply poignant: “To My Friends in Yugoslavia, Who are All Dead or Enslaved.”

Through her, we will visit seven major national homelands, notably Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia - all names that should have an eerie and deadly association that Dame West would not have wished upon a 2017 reader. In each place, she will visit (to us) obscure monasteries and monuments. She will recite for us the backgrounds of the royal houses and peoples who were martyred, betrayed, or themselves betrayed the many causes that form the jumbled nexus of history she knew as Yugoslavia. She argues that the selected human tools of the Serbian independence movement that assassinated Emperor Franz Joseph and initiated World War One were local heroes.

She takes a stance on the issue of women, who are so often sold as breeding animals for political purposes and the more modern equivalent of pheasants, worked prematurely from the beauty of youth into the exhaustion of age. She is bitter about the casual manner in which the better-known western nations sold states in the Balkans to Austria or back to the Turks, always to the impoverishment and subjugation of the locals.

Into this mix, she offers a plea and a patriotic call to those who had been isolationists and idealists. Standing above the fray may lend purity to the conscientious objector, but at the cost of the blood of those the objector should be sworn to protect. Many years later, this can sound like a note of propaganda. Allowing for that, it is still an important insight.

When the Bosnian war erupted in 1992, it was common to observe that the war was creating enemies out of people who had lived in peace for years. By this time, Dame West would have been dead for ten years, and the state of Yugoslavia that she had traveled through was in ruins, with worse to come. What Black Lamb and Grey Falcon accomplishes, beyond any intention on her part, is to remind the modern reader that the forces that tore Yugoslavia apart and initiated this particularly inhumane raping and killing had antecedents that had been simmering for centuries. However much individuals had found ways to respect or at least coexist with each other, Dame West had told us, perhaps unwittingly, that the spirit of cooperation was weak, and the desire for blood had never cooled.

Another epic book on the Balkans has emerged.

The book chronicles a two-month road trip through a significant portion of Yugoslavia by a British writer. With meticulousness and fastidiousness, she recorded every single thing that she and her husband encountered on their journey.

She has a sharp eye for people and their behaviors, and she effectively employs her descriptive powers when描绘 the country and its inhabitants. Although I don't concur with all of her opinions, and some of her flights of fancy border on the tiresome, she still manages to convey the vitality of Balkan society. Moreover, she weaves into her narrative extensive details from the rich and tumultuous history of the area.

Perhaps the true value of this book lies in the fact that the writer visited Yugoslavia in 1939, on the eve of WWII. Everyone was aware that a war was approaching, but no one suspected that it would be so disastrous. As a result, it serves as a monument to the lost world that was pre-WWII Yugoslavia.

WWII was only the second conflict between Serbs and Croats, and it is the unresolved issues from that era that the nationalist leaders were able to exploit with such devastating consequences 50 years later. (The first conflict, WWI, was also imposed from the outside.)

In 1998, I had the opportunity to become friends with a political refugee from Bosnia and her family. Coincidentally, I was spending a significant amount of my time at a café owned by a Bosnian couple. After Bill Clinton finally and somewhat belatedly awarded refugee status to many Bosnians, they had started to move into our neighborhood.

At that time, I was rather ignorant of the history of the South Slavs. However, having read numerous articles about West's book in relation to the Yugoslavian wars of the nineties, I decided to read it. Over the course of several days, I immersed myself in the book at that café.

This book is not one that I would recommend to just anyone. It is essential for the reader to have a general knowledge of the history of Europe, especially the inter-war period. West was documenting her trips in the late thirties and covering the history of the constituent parts of what was then The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. An understanding of inter-war history is a prerequisite. Beyond that, she combines a fair amount of impressionism, which I find of uncertain value, with explorations into episodes of the region's history dating back to antiquity. However, her focus is primarily on what were, for her, relatively recent events.

**Title: The Importance of Reading**

Reading is an essential activity that offers numerous benefits.

It allows us to expand our knowledge, improve our vocabulary, and enhance our cognitive abilities.

When we read, we are exposed to different ideas, cultures, and perspectives, which helps us to become more open-minded and understanding.

Moreover, reading can be a great source of entertainment and relaxation.

It can transport us to different worlds and allow us to escape from the stresses of daily life.

In addition, reading is a skill that is necessary for success in many areas of life, such as education, career, and personal growth.

Therefore, it is important to make reading a regular part of our lives.

We can start by setting aside some time each day to read, choosing books that interest us, and gradually increasing the difficulty level as we progress.

With practice and dedication, we can become better readers and reap the many rewards that reading has to offer.

To be continued.

When reading this book, there are two crucial points to bear in mind.

Firstly, Rebecca West is extremely pro-Serb and vehemently anti-Turk.

Secondly, she has a profound hatred for Germans.

Due to her biases, if you have any interest in the history of the Balkans, this book should not be your sole source of information. However, she does offer a captivating account of the region's tumultuous past. What astonishes me is her remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate the history of each place she visits into her description of her own present experiences and then connect that particular bit of history to the overall history of Yugoslavia. Her descriptions are not only beautiful, lush, and evocative but also incredibly adept at capturing a moment in words. You can almost randomly open the book and discover an example.

"So we went our way by the river, widened now into a lake, which held on its rain-grey mirror a bright yet blurred image of the pastoral slopes that rose to the dark upland forest, and which seemed, like so much of Bosnia, almost too carefully landscape-gardened. At the end, it split with a flourish into two streams, which were linked together by a village set with flowering trees, its minarets as nicely placed as the flowers on those trees."

The picture is so vivid that it makes me feel a tinge of sadness that I'll never be able to witness Bosnia in such a way.

Yeah, that's right. It took me almost ten years to read this book.

Context: I would only read it at work during the occasional lunch-break. The book itself had a strange quality. At times, it was utterly fascinating, pulling me into the rich tapestry of the Balkans. But then, there were stretches when it was as dry as dust, making it a real struggle to get through.

Finishing this book is truly a testament only to my deep love of the Balkans. I have finally reached the end, and now I shall recycle this book. It's in a rather sorry state. It's pretty battered, having been broken into pieces to make it easier to read during lunch. And it was pre-owned, containing copious notes of the original owner.

So, rest in pieces, noble travelogue. You have served your purpose for me, and now it's time for you to move on and perhaps bring some other reader a different kind of experience.

I schlepped this 1000 plus page book around during my travels through Eastern Europe this summer. I was hoping to gain some deep insights into the people and places that I was passing by. And I truly fell in love with this book. It was not only because of the fascinating history of the former Yugoslavia that it presented, but also because of Rebecca West's wonderful writing. I had a great deal of trouble picking up a pen during my journey. I found that there was no possible way I could come even remotely close to capturing her vivid and detailed descriptions. Moreover, I also learned through this book that to truly understand Yugoslavia is to understand one thousand years of conquest and war that have taken place throughout Europe and the Middle East. It opened my eyes to a whole new world of historical events and their far-reaching impacts.

Typically, I'm not a big fan of travel books. It's extremely challenging to convey travel experiences accurately in words. As a result, authors often resort to using overly flowery language and engaging in introspection that can verge on the kind of angst seen on Livejournal. However, this work is a notable exception to this rule.

Spanning over a thousand pages, it delves into the history and culture of Yugoslavia as experienced by an English tourist in 1937. The entire book is beautifully written, offering insightful commentary on history, culture, and the people. If you have an interest in European history, it's well worth the 1150 pages. Fortunately, this edition includes translations of some French, German, and Latin quotes in the footnotes. However, due to Rebecca West's extensive classical education, which is beyond what most people have today, many references to composers, artists, and lesser-known figures from European history elude me.

The first third of the book, covering Dalmatia, Croatia, and Bosnia, progresses rather slowly. The description of each village, church, and island can become somewhat monotonous (and even depressing, given the grim history of this region). In the second third, focusing on Serbia and Macedonia, the narrative gains momentum with a real conflict emerging between the travelers, their friend, and his wife. If this were a work of fiction, I might complain that it doesn't make sense. How could the abominable Gerda, who is racist and anti-Slav in a way characteristic of a 1930s-era German, be married to the delightful Constantine, a Serbian Jew? Since this is nonfiction, though, I could only wince helplessly as the narrator and her husband discuss the dreadful possibilities that would arise if leaders with Gerda's mindset came to power in Europe. Later, the epilogue provides an update on the events that occurred between the book's writing in 1937 and its publication in 1941, and it's quite sobering, especially when considering how little the West knew about the actual actions of the Nazis.

Throughout the book, but particularly dominant in the final third (Kossovo and Montenegro), there is a consistent criticism of Western culture. On one hand, it can be a bit tiresome to read about the noble peasants and the foolish and unfortunate city dwellers. I imagine that 50+ years ago, people seriously debated the loss of traditional cultural identities and the overreliance on modern technology. However, in our thoroughly modern era, we have advanced so far that going back to a system where everyone grows their own food and sews/embroiders their own clothes simply isn't feasible. This criticism sounds rather like the whining of slow-food enthusiasts. On a more significant level, the author compares the Orthodox and Catholic (and by extension, Protestant) worldviews of the East and West and deeply criticizes the Atonement and other doctrines. The tone here sometimes borders on shrill, but the issues she raises are quite serious and require a great deal of intellectual effort from the reader to resolve.

This was such an incredibly good read.

The author's extensive knowledge is truly evident in the travel journal writing.

If you are familiar with Charlotte Mason's concept of "spreading a living feast" and have ever pondered what it would be like for students who have experienced it, Rebecca West is the ultimate result.

I'm not suggesting that she was educated precisely in the manner of Charlotte Mason, but her studies were undoubtedly filled with engaging and lively books.

Throughout this book, she effortlessly makes connections from all her reading and explains how history has molded the countries she visited.

She also shows how religion, politics, and even what we eat and wear are all intertwined.

If you relished The Island of the World by Micheal O'Brien, then this book would surely be a source of great delight for you.

It offers a unique perspective and a wealth of interesting insights that will keep you engaged from start to finish.

A few years ago, I happened to read The Return of the Soldier, the debut novel of Rebecca West, whose real name was Cicely Isabel Fairfield. I had a certain liking for it, but not to the extent that I would be eager to explore more of the author's works. However, earlier this year, on the recommendation of another blogger, I purchased Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, one of her later books.

This book is a hefty tome, nearly 1200 pages long. It's so heavy and large that it doesn't even fit comfortably in my shoulder bag, which already contains all kinds of odds and ends! But since March, I've been reading it in small portions, interspersed with other books. I finally completed it in Rome over the weekend, and now I already feel a sense of loss. This is because it's one of the most remarkable books I've ever encountered. There's no exaggeration or hyperbole in this statement.

I'm not entirely sure how to accurately describe Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, which was first published in England in 1941. On the surface, it seems to be an account of the author's visits to the former state of Yugoslavia - now just a historical memory - during the interwar period. In that regard, it can be considered a travelogue. But oh, how inadequate that term feels, as it conjures up images of the tedium of train spotting and stamp collecting, of places checked off on an itinerary and images frozen in an album.

There are indeed beautiful and detailed descriptions of the various places she visited, from Croatia in the north to Macedonia and Montenegro in the south, places that one might be tempted to follow in her footsteps. But Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is so much more than just a travel journal or a Lonely Planet guide. It's part history, part criticism, part philosophy, part theology, part personal introspection, part political warning, and towards the end, even part novel. Above all, it's a kind of love story, the story of the writer's love for the people and the civilization of Serbia. She makes the reader see Serbia partly through her own eyes and partly through the eyes of a man she calls Constantine the Poet, her official government guide through the country. I'll have more to say about 'Constantine' later, as he's a character I grew quite fond of.

The tragedy of Yugoslavia, and it is indeed a tragedy, lies in the fact that it was a country shaped by some of the great contradictions and fault lines of history - the Western and the Eastern Roman Empires, the Catholic and the Orthodox, the Christian and the Muslim. It was this background and these influences that made the Southern Slav State almost an impossible dream.

Driven by internal hatreds, the people were also the victims of empires: of the Turkish Empire, against which the Serbs fought for centuries in pursuit of the right to exist, and of the Austrian Empire, which in its later Austro-Hungarian form was to have a particularly malevolent influence. Beyond that, West sees the Slavs as the victims of a 'Third Empire', one yet to emerge. This, as she puts it, is Gerda's empire. But who or what is Gerda, you might ask? Gerda is Constantine's wife, and I'll also have more to say about her.

The wonder of this great, sprawling book is that it takes the reader to the heart of a civilization or a people - I really can't say 'country' - through its past, through the traces of its past, through its art, particularly in the various religious establishments that West visits. These places seem to offer a glimpse into the intense Orthodox experience, which is both mystical and ethereal yet immediate in the lives of the people. There are long historical passages where she touches on the greatness of the medieval Serbian Empire, the empire of Stephen Dushan, which was the last best hope of saving Byzantine civilization from the steady encroachment of the Ottoman Turks. But Dushan died, and within a generation, Serbia was in ruins. Serbia met its destiny and destruction on the battlefield of Kosovo.

This is another remarkable aspect of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: it shows, as West puts it, the past side by side with the present it created. Here, her argument becomes quite subtle. She has no patience at all for Christian concepts of atonement or sacrifice, which she refers to as the blood ritual of the black stone. The black stone in question is a feature in a field she comes across, a place where the peasants come to offer up lambs in sacrifice.

It was this fatal obsession with sacrifice, this longing for a greater kingdom, an eternal kingdom, that led Tsar Lazar into battle with the Turks on Saint Vitus Day, 28 June 1389, a recurring black day in Slav history. Here, she records the old Serbian poem of Tsar Lazar and the Grey Falcon, which was translated for her by Constantine:

There flies a grey bird, a falcon,
From Jerusalem the holy,
And in his beak he bears a swallow.
That is no falcon, no grey bird,
But it is the Saint Elijah.
He carries no swallow,
But a book from the Mother of God.
He comes to the Tsar at Kossovo,
He lays the book on the Tsar's knees.
This book without like told the Tsar:

"Tsar Lazar, of honourable stock,
Of what kind will you have your kingdom?
Do you want a heavenly kingdom?
Do you want an earthly kingdom?
If you want an earthly kingdom,
Saddle your horses, tighten your horses' girths,
Gird on your swords,
Then put an end to the Turkish attacks,
And drive out every Turkish soldier.
But if you want a heavenly kingdom
Build you a church on Kossovo;
Build it not with a floor of marble
But lay down silk and scarlet on the ground,
Give the Eucharist and battle orders to your soldiers,
For all your soldiers shall be destroyed,
And you, prince, you shall be destroyed with them."

When the Tsar read the words,
The Tsar pondered, and he pondered thus:

"Dear God, where are these things, and how are they!
What kingdom shall I choose?
Shall I choose a heavenly kingdom?
Shall I choose an earthly kingdom?
If I choose an earthly kingdom,
An earthly kingdom lasts only a little time,
But a heavenly kingdom will last for eternity and its centuries."

The Tsar chose a heavenly kingdom,
And not an earthly kingdom,
He built a church on Kossovo.
He built it not with floor of marble
But laid down silk and scarlet on the ground.
There he summoned the Serbian Patriarch
And twelve great bishops.
Then he gave his soldiers the Eucharist and their battle orders.
In the same hour as the Prince gave orders to his soldiers
The Turks attacked Kossovo.

Then the Turks overwhelmed Lazar,
And the Tsar Lazar was destroyed,
And his army was destroyed with him,
Of seven and seventy thousand soldiers.

All was holy, all was honourable
And the goodness of God was fulfilled.

But as far as West is concerned, it was not good at all; for the people were condemned to centuries of servitude. Writing from the perspective of the late 1930s, it was clear to her that "the whole world was a vast Kosovo"; that Czechoslovakia was the 'black lamb' and that Neville Chamberlain, then the British prime minister, was the high priest of the cult of sacrifice. Resistance, not sacrifice, was the essential thing, the noble thing.

I really must stop here, for fear of spending as many words in praising this superb book as it took to write it! So let me just finish, as promised, by saying something about Constantine and Gerda.

Constantine, as I've mentioned, is described as a poet and an official, a former student of Henri Bergson, the great French philosopher. And taking a cue from Bergson's philosophy, he is, for me, a living embodiment of the élan vital. He is full of wit and wisdom, full of simple energy, full of love for the idea of Yugoslavia. Throughout the book, he is a dominant influence, a giant. He is also of Jewish origin, which is a point of some significance.

When the group arrives in Belgrade, we meet Gerda, his wife. Quite simply, Gerda is a monster. She is German, not just German but an obvious Nazi. She travels south with West, West's husband - who accompanies her throughout her trip - and Constantine to Macedonia, but she hates everything she sees: she despises the Slavs and Slav culture. Her mere presence diminishes Constantine, reducing him from a giant to a dwarf. It was with her that my sense of disbelief kicked in. Here, the book seems to be entering the territory of the novel. I quickly realized that there was no real Gerda; that she was an idea, a metaphor for the things to come, a metaphor for the Third Empire that was to invade Yugoslavia in 1941, a metaphor for a final sacrifice to the Black Stone.

No sooner had I finished Black Lamb and Grey Falcon than I began to think about Constantine, about his fate. Perhaps 'worry' is a better word. West makes no mention of him in her epilogue. What happened to him, I wondered, after the Nazis took control, after Gerda's Empire was established? The rump state of Serbia was one of the first places to be declared Judenrein - free of Jews. Did this brave and wonderful man, who survived the death march of the Serbian army in 1915, end up in Auschwitz like so many others? Did he even exist at all, or was he just another symbol, another metaphor? I'm happy to say that, after some quick internet research, I discovered that he did exist and that he did survive. His real name was not Constantine at all. He was Stanislaw Vinaver, an important figure in Serbian literature and culture. He joined the Yugoslav army in 1941 and was held as a prisoner-of-war in a German camp. During this time, West sent him food packages through the Red Cross. He died in 1955.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon concludes with bombs falling on London. The author reflects, Often, when I have thought of invasion, or a bomb has dropped nearby, I have prayed, ‘Let me behave like a Serb.’ Amen. How extraordinary these people are and how little we have understood them. How extraordinary this book is, a true masterpiece.

Writing a five-star review filled with superlatives is always a challenging task. For those who haven't read it yet, it seems impossible for any book to live up to the kind of praise that a passionate reader wants to bestow. And so, I truly need to organize my thoughts here because I wholeheartedly believe that Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is one of the three or four greatest books published in the twentieth century, and I want to ensure that I present my case as effectively as possible. (I say 'three or four' just to be on the safe side – in a private conversation, I would have to admit that personally, there's nothing I would rate higher than this.) This is going to be a lengthy review as I want to quote her in detail.

First of all, let's recognize what a formidable prospect this book is. Let's be honest, eleven hundred pages about the Balkans doesn't sound very promising, and personally, I doubt I would have ever read it if I hadn't been traveling to Serbia and Montenegro myself. Recommending it to others isn't always easy as it is indeed large and does contain some slow parts – but somehow, these become part of its genius. There are some masterpieces that seem flawless, and the writing of which I can't even understand – Nabokov's Pale Fire is one such example. But then there are other great works whose imperfections seem to be an inherent part of what makes them great, and Black Lamb is of that kind. I can understand how it was written, but the sheer depth of thinking involved leaves me astounded.

It's important to clarify what it's not. People who criticize this book sometimes claim that its politics are biased or that recent historiography has made West's theories about the Byzantine Empire outdated. This is, at best, beside the point. The book is not a history or a political tract: it's a travel journal that just so happens to involve some profound thinking in several important areas. (Claims that she is 'anti-German' are particularly absurd – West and her husband were great lovers of German culture. What they disliked was Germany's political environment in the 1930s, which anyone would have to admit is quite reasonable.)

On a sentence-by-sentence level, her writing is exceptional in its clarity and striking imagery, being both witty and beautiful. 'She was one of those widows whose majesty makes their husbands seem specially dead', she says of one woman; and of another, 'It is true that she was plump as an elephant, but she was so beautiful that the resemblance only served to explain what it is that male elephants feel about female elephants.' On another occasion, after a long description of Orthodox priests chanting hymns, she concludes with extraordinary sensitivity:

If there be a God who is fount of all goodness, this is the tribute that should logically be paid to Him; if there be only goodness, it is still a logical tribute.

I am completely charmed by her description of the Islamic call to prayer:

It is a cry that holds an ultimate sadness, like the hooting of owls and the barking of foxes in night-time. The muezzins are making that plain statement of their cosmogony, and the owls and foxes are obeying the simplest need for expression; yet their cries, which they intended to mean so little, prove more conclusively than any argument that life is an occasion which justifies the hugest expenditure of pity.

What is most remarkable for a modern reader is how refreshingly direct Rebecca West is. Nowadays, it's common for many writers to distance themselves from controversial views by using disingenuous constructions like 'Some people might say that…' or 'it could be argued that…' or 'one might suggest that…'. There is none of that here: she decides what she thinks about an issue and states it in the most forceful way possible. Some people have taken this to mean that she has a black-and-white view of the world, but in my opinion, that is a disastrous misreading. Rebecca West's understanding is very nuanced; she just believes that the best way to advance an argument is to state it in its strongest form. For example, she doesn't agree with the Islamic practice of veiling women – but she says it like this:

The veil perpetuates and renews a moment when man, being in league with death, like all creatures that must die, hated his kind for living and transmitting life, and hated woman more than himself, because she is the instrument of birth, and put his hand to the floor to find filth and plastered it on her face, to affront the breath of life in his nostrils.

It's extremely invigorating and challenging to read arguments presented in this way. You won't always agree with her – often you'll disagree strongly – but you are always engaged with the prose, in a two-way conversation, either shouting out in agreement or jumping out of your chair with objections. She is a visceral writer. But at this point, let me digress slightly into

A PERSONAL INTERLUDE

In the mid-2000s, I found myself staying with a gay sexagenarian Baron who worked at a Tunbridge Wells bookshop. His baronial title had been inherited from Belgian relatives, he drank a lot of blended scotch, and he was one of the nicest people I've ever met. His entire house was filled with books: they lined the floors to the ceilings in every room of the house, including the kitchen and the stairwells. A man after my own heart.

One day as we sat sipping whisky, I told him that I'd just started reading the most incredible book: 'Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, I don't know if you know of it….' Nick jolted up in his chair. 'What was that? What did you say? You're reading Rebecca West? Well, that's – gosh. I knew her, you know….'

It turned out that she had officially opened the secondhand bookshop he used to own, and they had corresponded for a while; he'd even gone up to London with his boyfriend to have dinner with her a few times. 'I only wish someone had Boswellized her,' he said to me on several occasions: she was, apparently, even more brilliant and acerbic in real life than she was on paper. One of the things he pointed out to me was how extremely rare it was for a publisher to agree to bring out such a huge book on such an obscure topic in the middle of the war, during paper rationing: 'In the end, they just thought it was of such extraordinary quality that they made an exception.'

So delighted was my landlord to find that someone thirty years younger than him was enjoying this book that when I left, he pulled a 1942 first edition of it, in two volumes, from his shelves and gave it to me as a parting gift. I kept it open on my desk as I read and used the Canongate version for scribbling in.

THE REVIEW, CONCLUDED

It is rare to find a travel book that builds a cumulative argument, let alone one that can be sustained over more than a thousand pages. Ultimately, what makes Black Lamb so astonishing for me is that Rebecca West uses the gifts I've outlined above to probe the depths of the human condition in a very clear-sighted way. To end this review, I want to look at these arguments a bit more closely – if you want to discover them for yourself, you could consider what follows to be spoilers. As West travels, Europe is on the brink of war: as she publishes, the killing is well underway. What makes humans behave like this?

It's the sort of grandiose question that usually receives grandiose, evasive answers. But not here. West thinks long and hard about it and is characteristically blunt in her conclusions. For her, there is a systemic problem with the Christianity that underpins western culture, simply because it's built on the idea of a human sacrifice, and that leaves us fundamentally unsure about right and wrong.

We are continually told to range ourselves with the crucified and the crucifiers, with innocence and guilt, with kind love and cruel hate. Our breasts echo for ever with the cries ‘In murdering goodness we sinned’ and ‘By murdering goodness we were saved.’ ‘The lamb is innocent and must not be killed,’ ‘The dead lamb brings us salvation,’ so we live in chaos.

She goes further than this, though. (She always goes further.) When, in Macedonia, West witnesses a lamb being sacrificed in real life, she grasps that this internal chaos mentioned above has very dark consequences for human society and conflict; indeed, for civilized nations, this is a paradox that can make us want to be defeated, even when – especially when – fighting for a good cause.

We believed in our heart of hearts that life was simply this and nothing more, a man cutting the throat of a lamb on a rock to please God and obtain happiness; and when our intelligence told us that the man was performing a disgusting and meaningless act, our response was not to dismiss the idea as a nightmare, but to say, ‘Since it is wrong to be the priest and sacrifice the lamb, I will be the lamb and be sacrificed by the priest.’ We thereby set up a principle that doom was honourable for innocent things, and conceded that if we spoke of kindliness and recommended peace it was fitting that afterwards the knife should be passed across our throats. Therefore it happened again and again that when we fought well for a reasonable cause and were in sight of victory, we were filled with a sense that we were not acting in accordance with divine protocol, and turned away and sought defeat, thus betraying those who had trusted us to win them kindliness and peace.

The implications of this extraordinary passage, when it comes to war, are fully explored. West hates war, but she also hates 'the fatuousness of such pacifism as points out the unpleasantness of war as if people had never noticed it before'.

That non-resistance paralyses the aggressor is a lie: otherwise the Jews of Germany would all be very well today.

Some causes are worth fighting for, even though doing so feels abhorrent. As far as I'm concerned, this insight has never been better expressed:

I had to be willing to fight for it even though my own cause could not fail to be repulsive to me, since the essence of civilization was disinclination to violence, and when I defended it habit would make me fear that I was betraying it.

This is the meaning of the book's title, drawn from a Serbian fable about religious sacrifice. In the global conflict erupting around her, Rebecca West could see emerging the same impulses and psychological currents that she had been studying and thinking about for years, ebbing and flowing throughout history and crystallized in the story of Yugoslavia: because human beings are a species that have evolved just enough intelligence to know that what we do is terrible, but not enough to go beyond it; and that leaves us unable to fight for our better nature with conviction.

For we have developed enough sensibility to know that to be cruel is vile, and therefore we would not wish to be the priest whose knife made the blood spurt from the black lamb’s throat; and since we still believed the blood sacrifice to be necessary we were left with no choice, if we desired a part in the service of the good, but to be the black lamb.

I know of no other book that thinks this hard or this deeply, and where depth of thought is combined with such felicity of expression – and that's without even considering the fact that it was written from within the heart of the maelstrom itself. Following West's train of thought through this doorstop-sized essay is one of the biggest intellectual adventures you can have from picking up a book, and everyone who can handle the experience deserves to have it. In my opinion, Black Lamb is simply unique – a thing of joy and beauty, a peerless example of applied brilliance, a dazzling masterpiece.