"In My Brother's Shadow" is an absorbing and skilful story, exploring the attitudes of a younger brother who has grown up overawed by the image of his elder brother who went missing in Yugoslavia ten years earlier. In his attempt to break away from a monotonous middle-class lifestyle the main hero goes on pilgrimage to Bosnia and Serbia to explore the land that took his brother's life. The story then takes him north to the cold and imperial beauty of St. Petersburg, Russia, where events force him to re-examine the basis of his morality, the nature of war and peace, love and hate, and violence and submission. It explores the motivations behind these and how ordinary people can be pushed to do the unthinkable. "In My Brother's Shadow" explores the relationship of two brothers and how actions can be defined by their environment.