On a summer morning in Sarajevo a hundred years ago, a teenage assassin fired not just the opening shots of the First World War but the starting gun for modern history. By killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Gavrilo Princip triggered conflict that would claim millions of lives in battle, and turmoil that would change our world. Tim Butcher uncovers the unreported details of Princip’s life and draws on his own experience, as a war reporter in the Balkans in the 1990s, to face down ghosts of conflicts past and present.

The Trigger is a rich and timely work that brings to life both the moment the world first went to war and an extraordinary region with a potent hold over history