The essay presents the results of a one year long research carried out in postwar Kosovo. The author analyses the interviews collected among Albanian women and men who had different experiences of the war. She also examines the master narrative about the war, promoted by Kosovar Albanian institutions and shaped by natioanlism. Gender perspective turns out to be central both for identifying the fundamental elements of the public memory of the war as forged by nationalistic discourse, while also attempting to understand to what degree individual memories conformed to this public memory and to what degree they might diverge from it.[...]