Adam LeBor

Report from Sarajevo

The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War

By

Chatto & Windus 326pp £18.99 order from our bookshop

The Trigger is an evocative and ingenious take on the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. While the big guns among our historians, such as Max Hastings and Margaret MacMillan, battle over the political and economic causes of the conflict, Tim Butcher has chosen to focus on the individual. His book follows the footsteps of Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb radical who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 and so triggered the start of the war.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'One of the reasons for its longevity is that it has virtually nothing to say about science and technology at all,… ,
    • 'The characters in many of these stories are trapped in the obsessive present tense of their own thoughts; in the m… ,
    • 'Libraries, for much of their existence, have embodied in microcosm many of the characteristics of the totalitarian… ,
    • 'Moss and Cynthia buy several properties through which to launder their ill-gotten gains, take lots of drugs, have… ,
    • 'Never mind the imperial cult. This is the cult of Boris. What happened to Rome?' From the LR archive:… ,
    • Thirty-two years ago this month, we published Muriel Spark's short story, 'A Playhouse Called Remarkable' Read it… ,
    • Time travel, bicycles and white horses populate @WomackPhilip's roundup of children's books by @marcussedgwick,… ,
    Follow Us