How long must Rebecca West have travelled, one wonders, for her book to clock in at 1,100 pages Not that long, as it turns out. She made one six-week-long trip to Yugoslavia in 1937 and two sorties in 1936 and 1938. Her own journey is documented skilfully enough, but what preoccupies this magisterial book is West&rsquos eccentric, wide-ranging travel through the histories of the Balkans, an effort &ldquoto show the past side by side with the present it created.&rdquo West&rsquos terrain is treacherous. Few regions in the world can point to as complex and strife-ridden a past as the former Yugoslavia. Her great gift, however, is her ability to single out the telling detail in a swatch of vastness, in a wry but acutely perceptive voice.

I bought West&rsquos book weeks before my own trip to the Balkans, and I bore its heft without complaint, dipping into relevant chapters along the way. It turned out that this was the wisest method of consumption. Only after returning to India did I read the book through, giving myself over to the Balkans all over again.

Samanth Subramanian is a journalist and the author of Following Fish Travels Around the Indian Coast.