Searching for Sofia: A Tale of Obsession, Murder and War

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

This book is a thriller, written in the aftermath of NATO’s 1999
aerial war waged to protect Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians from its ethnic
Serbs. Several have written about the disintegration of Yugoslavia from
1991 onward, but John Nadler, a Canadian journalist, tells the story in
human terms.

The story involves Gjorg Isufi, an ethnic Albanian resident of Kosovo,
and his fiancée, Sofia Neznanovic, an ethnic Serb. The 1999 war
separated the lovers. Nadler had known Gjorg since 1998. After the war,
Gjorg initially assumed that Sofia was dead, but then changed his mind
and decided that Nadler, who was neither Albanian nor Serb, might be
able to help him find her. Nadler agreed to help, and this book is the
story of the search.

What remained of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) was preparing for
elections. Slobodan Milosevic was running against the more reasonable
Kostunica, but tension prevailed, as few expected Milosevic to accept
defeat. After weeks of NATO bombing, most Serbs did not trust
Westerners, and Nadler did not know whom to trust. Momo, Sofia’s
father, was reportedly an undercover agent with Serbia’s secret
police.

Nadler observed the passionate hatreds of the contending parties, and
he places this true story into its historical context. He relates the
horror of the 1999 war and the sense of hopelessness of those who knew
little except one war after another, and who took ongoing violence for
granted. With better leadership, multicultural Kosovo might have been a
tourist mecca instead of a battleground, he laments. He depicts the Serb
perspective through the experiences of Boris Postovnik, a singer and
medical student.

In 2001, Nadler did manage to locate Sofia and informed Gjorg. Nadler
also discovered that Momo had not worked for the secret police. By then,
however, Gjorg had lost interest in Sofia. “I’m with the Albanian
people now. I found myself,” he said.