The Trigger

By: Tim Butcher

Narrated by: Tim Butcher

On a summer morning in Sarajevo a hundred years ago, a teenage assassin fired not just the opening shots of the First World War but the starting gun for modern history. By killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Gavrilo Princip triggered conflict that would claim millions of lives in battle, and turmoil that would change our world. Tim Butcher uncovers the unreported details of Princip’s life and draws on his own experience, as a war reporter in the Balkans in the 1990s, to face down ghosts of conflicts past and present. The Trigger is a rich and timely work that brings to life both the moment the world first went to war and an extraordinary region with a potent hold over history.

©2014 Tim Butcher (P)2014 W F Howes Ltd

Critic reviews

"An exploration of the life of the teenager who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and so triggered the First World War"

"A remarkable, fascinating book by a courageous and perceptive writer" (Alexander McCall Smith) on (Blood River)
"Quite superb… a masterpiece" (John Le Carre)

Moving and meaningful, historic and personal

Just a wonderful weaving between two periods in history and two people's journeys through them. Fascinating, insightful, and deeply engaging. The author managed to tell the facts and also the stories, and his openness and vulnerability were all the more poignant through their absence of melodrama.
This is a very important story.