Only the Nails Remain : Scenes from the Balkan Wars

"Only the Nails Remain" is a chronicle of poet and critic Christopher Merrill's ten war-time journeys to the Balkans from the years 1992 through 1996.

At once a travelogue, a book of war reportage and a biography of the imagination under siege, this personal narrative takes the reader along on the author's journeys to all the provinces and republics of the former Yugoslavia.He travelled through Bosnia-Herzegovina, Coatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and Vojvodina, as well as to Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Turkey.

His journeys provide the narrative structure for an exploration of the roles and responsibility of intellectuals caught up in a decisive historical moment, many of whom either helped to incite the war or else bore eloquent witness to its carnage.

This is a literary meditation on war and a portrait of the poetry, politics and people of the Balkans.