Between Mountains

Robin Chamberlain is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University.

Maggie Helwig’s second novel tells the story of the destruction of
Yugoslavia in a way that is both intensely human and compassionately
humane. Set in the aftermath of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, Between
Mountains is, among other things, the story of Daniel, a Canadian
journalist living in Bosnia at a time when media interest in the region
is starting to wane. His life begins to intersect with that of Lili, a
Serbian-Albanian woman who listens to and records the stories of both
the victims and the perpetrators of war crimes. Fraught with
consequences both political and personal, their relationship underscores
one of the novel’s central themes: the violent intrusion of the past
into the present.

Between Mountains is a haunting portrait of people who are confronted
with the near-impossible task of acknowledging their memories of an
intolerable past without being overwhelmed by them.