Nick Miller. The Nonconformists: Culture, Politics, and Nationalism in a Serbian Intellectual Circle, 1944–1991. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press. 2007. Pp. xvi, 380. $44.95

Over the last five years, in articles and reviews, Nick Miller has been pushing historians and other scholars to ask the question: can Serbian intellectuals be held accountable for “the creation of one of the most intolerant and narcissistic national movements that I know of” (p. xiv)? While not answering this question for all Serbian intellectuals, Miller lays out the case for three influential Serbian literary and cultural figures: a novelist, Dobrica Ćosić; a painter, Mića Popović; and a literary critic and playwright, Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz. Each traveled a different path to Serbian nationalism. Ćosić was certainly more central than the others in the creative processes associated with Serbia's “descent into obtuse and exclusivistic nationalism.” However, Miller argues that Popović and Mihiz led Ćosić to “his final destination, as a revivalist and a nationalist” (p. 348). In Miller's capable...