Anyone who has traveled through the former Yugoslavia cannot help but notice shiny black marble graveyards. Long journeys in the countryside with miles of fields and rocks are suddenly punctuated by a glimpse of old stone turbans falling into the ground or new highly stylized cemeteries with pictures or even holograms of the dead, and freshly polished tombstones, laid with fresh flowers. Although newer sites cannot always match the “tombs of giants” or limestone stećak graves found across the region in terms of beauty, many are large and elaborate. And all too often, they are also the only sign of commemorative collective identity for miles. Catholic graves often contain a cross, often a crucifix or angel as well as figurines such as the Virgin Mary, or cupids, doves, miniature cars or motorbikes, and soccer balls (154). Roma graves are sometimes fenced in, and many have images of wagon wheels, benches and flowers, or very personal etchings of the individual playing cards or drinking coffee. Children’s graves contain toys. Status as well as religion is clearly important as individuals invest a lot of money into gravestones and accoutrements. On one Muslim gravestone the deceased is remembered as drinking wine, wearing Versace, smoking cigarettes, and with an epitaph: “I raised this memorial to myself in honor of my life” (234).

Professor Carol S. Lilly noted that graveyards were often used to mark out political and ethnic lines of division. Commemorating the dead also meant defining the space, symbols and identity “components” (10) with which they were buried. Partisans had five-pointed stars while Muslims were interred with Islamic traditional markers and sometimes with Arabic calligraphy. Lilly argues that the study of graveyards can help us understand the wider society and the ways it has changed often quite rapidly since 1945. While pro-regime Partisans were honored, the regime’s opponents were often buried in unmarked graves, hidden but not forgotten. This neglect led directly to the “narrative of bones and graves” (228) within the nationalist resurgence of the 1980s, often played out by rabble-rousing politicians on television who rejected the socialist legacy tout court. Desecration followed on from nationalist rhetoric. The book includes a discussion of the destruction inflicted upon Bogdan Bogdanović’s stunning 1965 necropolis in Mostar designed to remember the 800 local Partisans who fell in action during the Second World War. The architect’s goal was to “join the old and the new—the dead and the living in Mostar … Massive symbols of the sun, stars, and planets are placed at the top where the fountain begins, drawing on designs and architecture from ancient civilizations” (1). With its 661 tombs melded together on a hill overlooking the city, collective commemoration retains an individual significance. When Lilly arrived there in June 2022, the cemetery was already damaged, and it continues to be regularly attacked by organized vandals who spray swastikas on the white stones or attack the edifice itself. Lilly is clearly alarmed at the continued rise of hate crimes, including desecration of memorials expressing a view that respect for the dead is a vital element in a pluralist society.

This monograph, the result of years of in-depth research, is an intricate extended essay about the long reach of the socialist era and the impact that this had on individuals and families. Borrowing from the methods of anthropology, sociology, as well as social history, the book contains many of her own photographs (selected from the 2000 that she took in situ) which capture the often poignant beauty of graves and the stories of the people buried there. She also includes photographs of desecrated graves, for example in Peja/ Peć (226), once the center of Serbian culture in the region, but now isolated and neglected. Lilly has made all her material available on a website https://yugcemeteries.omeka.net/about. After many years of archival research and interviews across the region, including visits to almost 120 cemeteries in Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Serbia, and Kosovo in both urban and rural locations, Lilly has published a meticulous, measured, and wise book which can be recommended to all students of post-1945 Europe. The book is clearly organized, and she has managed to condense decades of wider research on the region with her crisp prose. Her reflections on the historiography of death and burial cultures gives this book an even wider appeal. Despite the rather modest title, the book’s scope has a range going well beyond the socialist era.