The smoke was so thick that she could hardly be seen. Oblivious to the chaos and the mayhem unfolding outside the small garden enclosure delineated by trivial bushes, the kind you see in every project, she was burning all her books. Although she was evidently staying, she had "no more use for them," she sadly said, as voluminous monographs about Tito and other socialist heroes piled up.

Books are harder to burn than Nazi propaganda let you believe. After exhausting her stock of matches, she had to borrow a light from passers-by. In the growing smoking pile, the last fifty years of socialist Yugoslavia from "dialectical materialism" to art slowly disintegrated. The world around was largely ignoring her; it was just one more fire in Grbavica, and she seemed to be doing the most normal thing in the world.

Audio (332k): Photographer's Comments
Why Did She Burn All of Her Own Books?