His five previous volumes of essays (published by The Lilliput Press) are masterful literature in the tradition of Swift, Yeats and Shaw, elegant and humane readings of Irish and European history, and ultimately hopeful testimony to human progress. Widely travelled in the Balkans, Butler wrote on a wide variety of subjects concerning his experience of the region, much of which remains deeply relevant to the recent history of Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia.

He lived in Yugoslavia between 1934 and 1937, and spoke Croatian fluently. Much of Balkan Essays deals with the genocidal Quisling regime of the Independent State of Croatia (1941- 45) and the collaborationist role played by the Catholic Church and, particularly, by Archbishop Stepinac – a topic which embroiled him in a major controversy in 1950s Ireland, and continues to polarize the political and cultural life of post- communist Croatia. For the first time, the extraordinary body of Butler’s Balkan work is brought together in a single volume.