Black Lamb and Grey Falcon was published by Macmillan in London and Viking in New York in 1941 — two volumes, over 1,200 pages, written across four years as Europe descended into the war that would destroy the Yugoslavia West had traversed. It is one of the great literary monuments of the twentieth century: a travel book that is also a history, a political argument, a philosophical meditation, and an autobiography — all simultaneously, on every page.
West traveled through Yugoslavia (Croatia, Dalmatia, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro) in 1937, accompanied by her husband Henry Andrews. The journey occasions an examination of everything: Byzantine history, Ottoman conquest, Austro-Hungarian administration, Serbian nationalism, Croatian separatism, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the nature of empire, the psychology of conquest and submission, the relationship between Christianity and sacrifice.
The book’s central argument — developed across hundreds of pages of historical analysis, personal observation, and philosophical reflection — is that civilizations repeatedly choose death over life: that there is a deep human impulse toward self-destruction that manifests in the worship of sacrifice (the black lamb of the title, killed in a fertility rite) and in the submission to authority (the grey falcon of Serbian legend, who advised Prince Lazar to choose heavenly over earthly kingdom — to accept defeat rather than fight). West is furious at this impulse: she sees it operating in the Balkans across centuries and in contemporary Europe’s appeasement of fascism.
The prose is extraordinary: learned, passionate, witty, digressive, intimate. West writes about architecture, food, landscape, personality (her portraits of individuals encountered in her travels are novelistic in their detail), politics, religion, and sex with equal fluency and equal intensity. No summary can convey the book’s richness — it must be read.
Collecting Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
First edition (Macmillan, London, 1941; Viking, New York, 1941): Two volumes, cloth binding, dust jackets.
Market values:
- Viking two-volume first US edition in dust jackets: $200–$600
- Macmillan two-volume first UK edition in jackets: $150–$400
- Single-volume reprint (Penguin Classics): $15–$25
- Signed copies (rare): $500–$1,500
One of the great books of the twentieth century by any measure. The 1990s Balkan wars (which West’s book had eerily predicted) drove renewed interest and new editions. Values for first editions have risen steadily since.