Lovers and Madmen: A True Story of Passion, Politics, and Air Piracy

by Julienne Eden Buši

Book Overview

LOVERS AND MADMEN: A TRUE STORY OF PASSION, POLITICS, AND AIR PIRACY is dominated by two central themes: politics and love. Julienne Busic's memoirs take the reader through the events that shaped her... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1519615027
• ISBN13: 9781519615022
• Release Date: December 2015
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 378 Pages
• Weight: 1.11 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Deep Insight Into Political Passion and Terror

With the subtlety of an impressionist brush, a picture quickly emerges of love, intrigue, and a passion for the people of Croatia. Lovers and Mad Men takes the reader on a detailed tour into the inner workings of the Croatian Nationalist Movement as it gains power as a political force. The reader is whisked through the back streets of world capitals and into dark alleys for clandestine meetings with the leaders of terrorist groups. Keeping just steps ahead of the dreaded Yugoslav secret police, you go with the Busics to meetings in smoky cafes and bars. You can almost taste the Slivovitz. Busic then keeps the reader by the hand as she details the inner workings and hard life of a committed member of a subversive group. She opens her emotional being for all to see as her passion for her lover, Taik, and the Croatian people grows. It may read, at times, like an action packed fictional work of Ian Fleming, but it is all true, as experienced by a regular girl from Portland Oregon. Take this one with you on that long plane flight. With this book, you won't mind economy class.

Really Fascinating Book

In 1969, Julienne Schultz, a young American nurse living in Vienna, met a Croatian man by the name of Zvonko Busic. Taik, as he was known to family and friends, had been banished from Yugoslavia for "revolutionary activities" stemming from his desire for a Croatia free from Serbian rule. Julie was entranced by his passion for his cause and for life in general; it was not long before she fell in love with him. At his request, while on a trip to Zagreb (the Yugoslav capital) she threw a packet of political leaflets from the top of a building. She was caught and served six months in a Yugoslav prison, waiting to be tried for the distribution of hostile propaganda. After her release, she was reunited with Taik. Banned from Austria, they lived in Germany for a time, where they were married, before moving to the United States. Taik, however, had not given up on his cause, and eventually he decided that the only way to force the world's attention to the Croatian plight was with a highly-publicized hijacking. Though Taik and his fellow hijackers, including Julie, fully intended that no one would be harmed, a police officer was killed by an explosive that was never meant to detonate. As a result, Julie and Taik were tried for and found guilty of murder. She served thirteen years and was released in 1990. He is still in prison. Lovers and Madmen is Julienne Eden Busic's memoir. It is a fascinating and well-written account of her life leading up to the hijacking of TWA Flight 355 on September 10, 1976, and the event itself. Julienne's take on the politics involved is especially interesting, as she is American--she was forced to come to terms with the realization that, in much of the world, the rights that we consider incontrovertible, such as free speech, are unheard of. The terrorism aspect is also worthy of note. Hijacking the plane was, of course, a terrorist act, albeit one meant to command attention, not elicit fear. The reasons behind the decision seem almost nonsensical--until one takes into consideration that these events happened twenty-five years (almost to the day) before the attacks on the World Trade Center. From a pre-9/11 perspective, hijacking was a much less sensitive action; it was not so personally insulting to Americans. When one looks at it that way, Taik's reasons don't seem so illogical--though they won't convince you that the hijacking was a good thing. Julienne has a lovely, poetic writing style, and she tells her story earnestly and elegantly. Her style brings to mind Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund; though the genres and contents of the books are quite different, if you liked Abundance, you may also enjoy Lovers and Madmen. It is, of course, a memoir, and as a result the story is somewhat skewed toward the author's perspective of events, which is to be expected. A few less-than-favorable details may have been omitted. Nonetheless, it's a provocative book, especially now, when terrorism is such a concern to Americans. The Bus

Amazing...makes you think

This book has two things to recommend it: 1) It contains such an amazing, almost incredible story that it made me want to do research just to find out more about Croatia in general and this hijacking incident specifically. I found myself completely believing Julie, and wondered what I would read somewhere else. It is an odd mixture of romance, memoir, tragedy, history, prison story, and even comedy! 2) Julie Busic is an outstanding writer. I loved her unique style and tone. I think everyone, no matter whether they were "for" or "against" the author, would enjoy this story.

A portrait of commitment

Scene: 1976. French sharpshooters surround an American aircraft parked on the tarmac of an airport outside Paris, while inside a blonde, pretty American girl - an educated, nice girl anybody would be pleased to have for a daughter - struggles to make things as comfortable as possible for the hijacked American passengers. Kind of movie-of-the-week stuff. Except ... she's not a flight attendant. She's one of the hijackers. This dissonance between who Julienne Eden Busic is and what she appears to be, indeed what she was growing up in a small Oregon town, forms the essence of her unusual and illuminating memoir, Lovers and Madmen: A True Story of Passion, Politics and Air Piracy. In language that is luminous, thoughtful, original and flayingly honest, Busic describes her transition from apolitical schoolgirl to revolutionary and the catalytic agent: love. But in Busic's rendering, the line between love and fate blur. She meets exiled Croatian dissident Zvonko "Taik" Busic on a street corner in Vienna, though "meet" is perhaps the wrong term -- he seems to be stalking her. Yet he's late for their first date, careless about time. In fact, without in any way being violent or overbearing, he moves early to assert dominance in their relationship. "In truth ... I am too fond," Juliet says to Romeo after agreeing to marry him after only one meeting. "And therefore thou mayst think my `havior light: But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange." Julie and Taik's romance has that quality, if not so much the passionate declarations of Shakespeare's famous lovers, still the sense of the hand of fate trailing downward, touching one then the other, almost as if at random, linking them forever together, no matter how high the cost. And the cost is very, very high. Julie first does six months in a squalid Yugoslav prison for smuggling and distributing revolutionary leaflets inside that then-Communist nation. When she is finally freed, upon bathing, she leaves a scum of dirt in the bathtub, so filthy is she from her ordeal. Taik neither congratulates her on her stamina nor thanks her. It seems that, so ingrained in him is the idea that one suffers for one's convictions that he doesn't even acknowledge her sufferings for his. And his conviction is that people should be allowed to express their own culture in their own country, to be free men on the land on which they were born. Busic paints him as dark, foreign, next to her open, American blondness. But such convictions as his are quintessentially American. Which is why, when the idea of a non-violent hijacking occurs, it is upon American soil that it is hatched and the plan is to educate Americans, who have been kept largely in the dark by U.S. media, of the plight of the Croatians, this annexed people caught up in the country-carving that occurred in the wake of World War I. The plan seems naive in retrospect. Post September 11th, c