The Pavelić Trap
When British journalist, Mick Morrison, finds himself almost by accident in Croatia as the Yugoslav conflicts of 1991-5 break out, he wonders whether he has the courage or resilience to become a successful war reporter. It is the beginning of a four-year journey leading him through the sieges of Dubrovnik and Sarajevo, the discovery of concentration camps in Northern Bosnia, killings in broad daylight in Višegrad, and an ethnic cleansing episode in which he comes close to losing his life.
As the Srebrenica massacre finally looks like leading to an end to the wars, Mick’s life is thrown into turmoil first by a personal tragedy and then by the emergence of a dark secret from his family’s past that disrupts his passage from rookie war reporter to award-winning journalist and makes him question his deepest convictions.
The Pavelić Trap, an epic account of the fall of Yugoslavia, will be Phil’s second novel published by Troubador and should be in bookshops in mid-2025.
Goran's Dilemma
28th November, 2024
1992. Bosnian Serb Army Commander, Ratko Mladić, is besieging and bombarding the citizens of Sarajevo. His forces are rampaging through much of the rest of Bosnia at the same time. But, as his notoriety increases, his daughter Ana, a medical student in Belgrade, is struggling to deal with the anomaly of her commitment to the caring professions and her father’s role as a genocidal killer. When her partner and fellow medical student, Goran, challenges her to renounce her father, she responds in a way no-one might have foreseen, changing the lives of those close to her dramatically and irrevocably.
As he struggles to deal with the consequences of Ana’s actions, Goran stumbles into a dilemma even more challenging than his choice over his ultimatum to her. His response to this fresh dilemma will haunt him for years; but, by now a qualified doctor, he works on the frontline of the post-war devastation in Bosnia, seeking to repair children damaged physically and psychologically by the conflicts. It is a saintly Bosnian Muslim social worker who emerges to jolt him out of his torpor, helps him chart his route to redemption, and teaches him a whole new way of living his life.
Though based on a true father-daughter dynamic, Goran’s Dilemma is also a timeless story of love discovered, doomed and then renewed.
What Next?
Phil is hoping to work up a collection of short stories and his next piece of contemporary historical fiction is likely to centre on the relationship between Ronald Reagan, President Gorbachev and the Star Wars programme. It has a working title of The Atomic Catapult – How my mate, Alvin, (nearly) broke the Soviet Union.
What's Phil reading now and what has he just read?
He is reading the second volume of Zachary Leader’s The Life of Saul Bellow, Love and Strife, 1965-2005, Andrew Roberts’ Napoleon the Great, Penguin Classics’ The New Penguin Book of American Short Stories: from Washington Irving to Lydia Davies, and Jack London’s White Fang. He recently completed Ian McEwan's Lessons ("I haven't read all of McEwan but I suspect this is one of his finest"), Isabel Allende’s A Long Petal of the Sea, Sol Stein’s Solutions for Writers, Percival Everett’s Erasure, To Build A Fire by Jack London, James Naughtie's The Madness of July, and Pat Nevin’s second volume of autobiography, Football and How to Survive It.