The War is Dead, Long Live the War by Ed Vulliamy: review The camps and their corrosive legacy are Vulliamy's subject in this searing book, in which he writes with controlled and righteous anger about the absence of any "reckoning" in the years since Bosnia's conflict. He argues that denialism, indifference and a flawed peace settlement that rewarded ethnic cleansing by effectively partitioning the country have all combined to prevent genuine reconciliation. Whereas post-war Germany had the moral courage to face up to the truth of its deeds, and so make peace with Europe, many Bosnian Serbs still deny what was done in their name. Omarska camp is now an iron ore mine, owned by Lakshmi Mittal, Britain's richest resident. So far, he has failed to construct a memorial to those who died on his site, apparently in deference to the objections of local Serbs. Meanwhile, a small but obsessive industry continues to question the existence of the camps and, by extension, the integrity of Vulliamy and his colleagues. One of their number was Noam Chomsky, surely the most preposterous intellectual of our time, who never visited Bosnia during the war but accused Vulliamy of "fabrications." Another villain was the late Harold Pinter. When Slobodan Milosevic finally stood trial in The Hague, partly for masterminding the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia's Muslims, Pinter helped to organise a "Committee for the Defence" of this mass murderer. Vulliamy has stayed in touch with camp survivors across the world. "They ask little, these people, but I believe that those who survive and are left bereaved by such crimes are owed at least one thing," he writes. They should be given back their lives by an admission of what happened. Their sanity requires that history should acknowledge the atrocities that were committed against them. Vulliamy is careful to stress that Bosnia's concentration camps fell into the Boer War category: they were not extermination centres but places where inmates were concentrated in terrible conditions prior to deportation. He is at pains to avoid glib Holocaust comparisons; in his view the camps had "echoes" - no more - of Auschwitz. His central conclusion remains, to my mind, incontestable: those who died or survived have never received the recognition and compassion they deserve. That remains the lasting shame of Bosnia's tragedy. The War is Dead, Long Live the War by Ed Vulliamy 400PP, The Bodley Head t £18 (PLUS £1.25 p&p) Buy now from Telegraph Books (rrp £20, ebook £17.91) Ed Vulliamy will be at Hay on June 7 at 5.30 pm. For more information or to book tickets go to hayfestival.org