Pale near Sarajevo is a winter resort whose transformation into a wartime capital brings the dissonance of the Bosnian war into sharp focus: ski chalets and Olympic infrastructure coexist with military command, armed men, and artillery overlooking a besieged city. In Emmanuel Carrère’s account, Pale is both a place of political power and the setting through which Eduard Limonov’s alliance with the Serb side becomes visible—not as an abstraction, but through his words, gestures, and participation in a film scene above Sarajevo.

From Olympic resort to wartime capital

Built in 1980 for the Sarajevo Olympics, Pale had the amenities and appearance of a ski resort. During the war it served as the capital of the Bosnian Serb Republic. Carrère’s description catches the jarring combination in a comparison to Vichy: a wartime political center with ski chalets and bobsled tracks in place of spas. The resort landscape does not soften the conflict; it makes the contrast between leisure architecture and wartime rule harder to ignore.

Pale also appears in a wider portrait of the institutions and imagery of the Serb war effort. Pawel Pawlikowski’s documentary records musicians playing hurdy-gurdies outside soldiers’ tents and songs that connect defeat on earth with victory in heaven and the burning of Turkish houses. Children sing martial ditties while carrying Kalashnikovs, and the names of ancestral heroes give way to contemporary leaders such as Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. The film also shows the two men bent over maps, marking borders and debating what can be conceded. The map-making resembles the negotiations taking place in Lisbon, Geneva, and Dayton, but here the decisions appear concentrated in the hands of the leaders themselves.

The officers’ mess and Limonov’s arrival

At the officers’ mess in Pale, Pawlikowski noticed Limonov among a group of Chetniks with whom he seemed unusually comfortable, though he was not himself a Chetnik. Limonov’s appearance suggested a deliberate crossing of roles: he wore a People’s Army overcoat over a leather jacket, had a crew cut and large glasses, and carried a 7.65 pistol that struck Pawlikowski as almost like a costume accessory. In a setting where armed affiliation was ordinary, the pistol made the writer look at once like a participant and someone acting out a part.

When Limonov heard a French-speaking Antenne 2 crew at lunch, he approached and introduced himself as a writer interested in the planet’s hot spots. He listed Vukovar and Transnistria as previous destinations and described himself, with a chuckle, as a kind of Bernard-Henri Lévy on the opposite side. The television crew reacted with perplexity and disgust to a journalist—or, as Limonov insisted, a soldier—carrying a gun. He answered their objection with a threat that he could shoot them, then defended the Serb position and rejected their neutrality as cowardice. The exchange ended with him returning to the Chetniks’ table, leaving the lunch in silence.

The incident exposed the gap between Limonov’s self-presentation and the response he provoked. He entered the conversation as a writer accustomed to moving between political and literary worlds, but the pistol and his declared alignment made neutrality impossible to treat as a mere professional convention. A soundman’s recognition of him through a book about his years in New York added another incongruity: the literary persona familiar to the crew sat alongside the armed figure before them.

A film made from the place

Pawlikowski asked Limonov to interview Karadžić for his film, a solution that suited the director’s preference for filming people speaking to one another rather than addressing an unseen interviewer. The resulting BBC documentary, Serbian Epics, presents the famous Russian writer in conversation with Karadžić, described as a psychiatrist and poet as well as the Bosnian Serb leader. Pale’s political setting thus enters the film not only through scenery but through the encounter between a foreign writer and the leader whose forces were fighting around Sarajevo.

The filmed meeting takes place on heights from which Serb batteries bombard Sarajevo. The city lies at the bottom of a basin, making it vulnerable to fire from above; mortar noise is nearly constant. Karadžić, tall and imposing in a large overcoat, explains that his people are not aggressors but seek territory they regard as historically theirs. Limonov nods respectfully and praises the Serbs for standing up to the countries aligned against them. When their conversation turns to poetry, Karadžić recites an ode he had written years earlier describing Sarajevo in flames. The shift from territorial claims to verse does not remove the violence from the scene: the bombardment continues around them, and the poem’s image of a burning city acquires a grim proximity to the war outside the conversation.

While Karadžić takes a telephone call, Limonov watches a soldier grease a machine gun. The soldier lets him try it, showing him how to position himself behind the weapon. Limonov then empties a magazine in the direction of the besieged city. Carrère emphasizes the contrast between the small, deferential figure in the film and the immense figure of Karadžić, and later describes the spectacle as making Limonov look like a child playing at toughness. The act is not presented as a confirmed crime, but it changes the meaning of the documentary encounter: Limonov does not remain merely an observer at the artillery position.

The restaurant and the limits of the record

Another story associated with Limonov’s time in Pale takes place at the Kon-Tiki restaurant during a banquet hosted by officers. A violinist on a small stage is a Muslim prisoner. The Serbs make him accompany one of the songs heard in Pawlikowski’s film, a song about burning Muslim houses. According to Limonov’s own version of the incident, he found the scene unfunny and offered the violinist rakia as consolation. When the man explained that his religion forbade alcohol, Limonov tried to withdraw; a Serb then insulted the prisoner and ordered him to drink.

The account does not resolve the larger circumstances of the banquet, and its qualification as Limonov’s version matters. It does, however, place him inside a social world where a captive musician is made to perform a song celebrating violence against people of his community. His attempted gesture of consolation distinguishes him from the officer who intervenes, but his embarrassment and retreat do not undo the coercion or the spectacle surrounding it.

Narrative significance

Pale is more than a backdrop in Carrère’s account. Its conversion from Olympic resort to wartime capital gives physical form to the collision of ordinary civic life and militarized politics; its officers’ mess and nearby heights locate Limonov within the Serb wartime milieu; and its restaurant provides a more intimate view of how that milieu treats a prisoner. The place binds together public authority, media representation, and private conduct.

The documentary also had a lasting effect on Carrère’s work on the book: after receiving a copy from Pawlikowski, he found Serbian Epics so disturbing that he stopped writing for over a year. What troubled him was not simply the image of Limonov committing a crime, which the film did not show, but the way the footage made him appear ridiculous, like a boy performing toughness. Pale therefore becomes the setting in which Limonov’s heroic self-image is tested by the camera. The artillery, the gun, the banqueting table, and the prisoner’s forced song leave little room to keep his wartime role at a safe distance from its consequences.