Ever since discovering Mostar in 1999 on a trip with an aid organization, Aline Cateux has continued to return, live and work there. Her long walks through the Bosnian city hardest hit by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina take her from neighbourhoods still lying in ruins to the Old Bridge — an embodiment of an unfinished reconstruction — and on to a factory that was once a source of pride in Yugoslavia’s industrial power, but has since become a symbol of corruption among local political elites. From one place to the next, Mostar, still divided and endlessly fascinating, reveals the beauty and resilience of its inhabitants, beyond all labels and categories. Thirty years after the fighting ended, what kind of urban space is this in which they struggle to survive? How did the people of Mostar come to say that the city they loved had disappeared?

“Essential reading for anyone who refuses to confuse peace with the mere silence of guns, this book is a moral compass set amid the ruins of our abdications.”

— Maxime Chevalier, Mare Nostrum