Another in the continuing series. This one is from Derb, whose excellent new book on algebra I am reading now.
“English persons, therefore, of humanitarian and reformist disposition constantly went out to the Balkan Peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom, and, being by the very nature of their perfectionist faith unable to accept the horrid hypothesis that everybody was ill-treating everybody else, all came back with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the massacrer.”
Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, 1943
Which is a great book but at 1200 pages a long one.
I think “Black Lamb” is West at her best – a wonderful book. I mislaid my copy during our last move and may have to buy another.