Hours after NATO started bombing Yugoslavia, Jasmina Tesanovic received an e-mail from a friend in Sweden, who wanted to know how she was doing. Jasmina didn't have time to write back, so she sent entries from her diary. Her friend, the writer Ana Valdes, posted Jasmina's diary entries on the website of a magazine she wrote for. Within a week, the diaries had been posted anonymously on fifty websites and sent in e-mails throughout the world. The diary of an anonymous woman from Belgrade had become everbody's diary.
The Diary of a Political Idiot was first published as a book in Argentina and has since been translated into eleven languages. At a time when "compassion fatigue" is seen as both the cause and the unavoidable consequence of current international news reporting, Jasmina Tesanovic's wide readership is as much a testimony to the intelligence and compassion of her readers as it is to her own.
