Blood on my Hands

The year is 1999, and for the first time since World War II, Europe is witnessing scenes of mass murder. The forces of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic have swept into Kosovo leaving a trail of death and heartbreak. Scenes of Milosevic’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ play out on television screens all over the world; haunted figures huddled behind barbed wire fences, bodies heaped in ditches. Adelaide surgeon Craig Jurisevic recalls his grandfather’s ordeal in a Nazi concentration camp and resolves to honour his memory by offering his skills as a surgeon to the victims of the conflict. Although no stranger to the battlefield, he is appalled at the unparalleled savagery of the Kosovo war. Sickened by scenes of murder and massacre, he sets aside his non-partisan status and joins forces with the Kosovo Liberation Army, operating on the injured at the front and leading night-time missions behind the lines to retrieve injured Kosovar villagers. Struggling to maintain his moral bearings, Jurisevic’s journey has become a descent into the heart of darkness. Blood on My Hands tells a story of terrible suffering, of extraordinary heroism, and of the savagery that lies coiled in the human heart.

Author Biography

Craig Jurisevic was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1965 and is married with three children. He is a cardiothoracic and trauma surgeon and has worked in many conflict zones. These include Israel and Gaza (1992-93), Albania and Kosovo in (1999), and with the Australian Army in East Timor (2006) and Afghanistan (2008). He is a member of the International Humanitarian Law Committee of the Australian Red Cross. Until recently, he worked as a surgeon in Adelaide and was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide. Robert Hillman is a Melbourne-based writer of fiction and biography. He grew up in rural Victoria but left Australia in his mid-teens to wander the world. His most recent biographies are The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif (2008) written with Najaf Mazari and My Life as a Traitor (2007) written in collaboration with Zarah Ghahramani and published internationally. My Life as a Traitor was a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the 2008 Prime Minister’s Literary Award. His memoir of his travels as a teenager, The Boy in the Green Suit, won the 2005 Australian National Biography Award and his novels include such highly-praised works as The Deepest Part of the Lake, The Hour of Disguise, and most recently, Joyful.