The Trigger by Tim Butcher delves into the life of Gavrilo Princip, the young assassin whose actions in Sarajevo in 1914 set the stage for World War I. Butcher's book is not just a biography but also a personal journey through the Balkans, retracing Princip's steps and exploring the region's turbulent history. The narrative is enriched by Butcher's own experiences as a war correspondent in the Balkans during the 1990s, providing a unique perspective on the enduring impact of nationalism and conflict. Reviewers commend Butcher's ability to weave together historical research, personal memoir, and contemporary analysis, creating a compelling and thought-provoking account. The book is praised for its vivid descriptions and the way it brings to life the complex motivations and circumstances that led to Princip's fateful actions. While some reviewers note that the book's structure can be initially disjointed, they agree that Butcher's storytelling ultimately brings all the elements together in a cohesive and engaging manner.
Quick quotes
…a tour de force. Butcher is a humane but unsentimental observer who creates space for the voices of other travellers who walked these paths before him. No account since Dedijer’s The Road to Sarajevo has so vividly evoked the world and inner life of the “undersized, emaciated, sallow, sharp-featured” young man who found himself sitting opposite an Austrian judge on the afternoon of 28 June 1914. And few have captured so thoughtfully the relationship between terrain and history in a country fraught by conflict.
This is expeditionary journalism at its best — a historical inquest radiated through the mind and experience of an outstanding reporter. The subjective eye, and the use of the perpendicular pronoun, have none of the overblown self-indulgence of today’s television pontificators and heavy metal military historians.
At first it reads oddly, a curious ragbag of material that seems disconnected. It is part a biography of ‘history’s ultimate teenage tearaway’, as Tim Butcher puts it, part an investigation into some of Princip’s surviving family members in Bosnia, an intensely personal memoir by Butcher of his time as a journalist covering the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and partly a discourse into the nature of nationalism. Yet he weaves the various strands together so deftly that it ends as a triumph of storytelling.
