Norman Stone

Mice That Roared

Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro

By

Hurst & Co 521pp £25 order from our bookshop

The fall of European Communism began and ended with a roaring of mice. Estonia declared ‘sovereignty’ in September 1988 and started a process that brought down the USSR. Slovenia in 1991 did much the same as far as Yugoslavia was concerned, and the whole business came to an end last year when Montenegro declared independence. Montenegro had been a part (and, as this book shows, a part more generally enthusiastic than others) of Communist Yugoslavia, and her defection had a significance out of all proportion to her size and weight.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • Start your week with a dose of Russian Revolutionary zeal. Donald Rayfield reviews Tobie Mathew's 'Greetings From t… ,
    • A treat from the LR Archive: exactly 20 years ago, Malcolm Bradbury reviewed John Updike's 'Bech at Bay' ,
    • ‘When bullets come close, the noise they make as they go past changes from a zing to a crack’ John Lanchester's dy… ,
    • Man with a Bloody Paintbrush: Robin Simon on Lucian Freud ,
    • Jane Ridley reviews The Diaries of Kenneth Rose (ed. D R Thorpe) ,
    • ‘Look,’ says Trump. ‘The fact is I’m only human.’ On the evidence of this book that point is debatable. From the A… ,
    • From our December/January issue - here's John Banville's review of Colm Tóibín on the fathers of Wilde, Yeats and J… ,
    Follow Us