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Bosnian Chronicle: A Novel

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Most people, whether from the former Yugoslavia or elsewhere, tend to say that "Bridge on the Drina" is Andric's best work. Well, they are wrong. Bosnian Chronicle ("Travnicka hronika" in the original) is Andric's true masterpiece. Nominally it presents the life of Travnik, the Bosnian provincial capital during Ottoman rule, during the early 19th century in the eyes of the French and German consuls stationed there. Andric says so much about central Bosnia in the way he shows the effect the people and the land have on these foreigners. Stunning, beautiful. If you can't read it in the original language, Hitrec's translation is surprisingly good. If you read nothing else by Andric, read this.

"Travnicka hronika" (The Bosnian Story, The Time of the Consuls... etc.) is Andric's second best work. I don't like ranking books, but I will dare to do it now. His major work "The Bridge on the Drina" (Na Drini cuprija) is a work of such originality and power, unequalled in literature... This book, however, uses a more conservative method, it talks about a smaller period of time and has a significantly smaller gallery of characters, all of which are, of course, very believable and beautifully depicted.
After opening it for the first time, I couldn't stop reading. It was so captivating that I read it in twice in the same week. Not many books do this for me.
"Bosnian Story" follows Austro-Hungarian and French consuls in the Bosnian city of Travnik over the period of five-six years. Andric didn't do much research for his novels, all his major works were written in Belgrade, during WWII, and all that time he almost never left his apartment. It is amazing that one can posses such great knowledge of Travnik and Bosnia, and most impressive of all, his depiction of Turkish, French and Austro-Hungarian politics is so accurate and clear.
What attracts me the most in Andric's works is his clear and simple, yet beautifully sounding sentence.
I strongly recommend you read this one. Chances are, you won't be disappointed. Simpler and less ambitious in approach, this book should perhaps be read before his masterpiece "The Bridge on the Drina."

I read this book a few years ago, and still think about its stories and themes. This brilliant novel opens a window to the small Bosnian town of Travnik (Andric's hometown) where representatives of the great European empires have come to play out their epochal hostilities under the suspicious eyes of the local townfolk. While the novel takes place in the Napoleonic era, the story was written (as was "Bridge on the Drina") while Andric was under house arrest during World War II, and thus its story of great forces coming to shake up a small town can be read in light of more recent world changing events. I made a point to visit Travnik on a trip to Bosnia two years ago, and felt as if I already knew the town intimately: the remains of the Pasha's palace on the hill is still there just as Andric describes it, as is the town nestled in the rolling Bosnian hills replete with Turkish fountains and monuments. Sadly, the multiethnic character of the town is gone now, as Serbs such as Andric himself are hard to come by in this part of Bosnia, and Jews are even more difficult to find. By reading this book, however, one can briefly visit Travnik in its multiethnic heyday, and enjoy the depiction of comraderie and sparring between the different local ethnic groups before the age of nationalism truly took hold. Everyone I have met from the former Yugoslavia cites this novel as Andric's best work.

Incidentally, this book has been translated as Travnik Chronicles (the original title), Bosnian Chronicle, and Days of the Consuls (translated by Celia Hawkesworth). Also, a collection of Andric short stories, entitled "The Damned Yard" in the edition I have, also features several more stories set in Travnik around the same era.

Andric's novel describes the events in a provincial town within the Ottoman Empire during the Napoleonic era. The story is told from the viewpoint of the French consul, a western rationalist. The interactions of the French consul, his Austrian counterparts, and members of their households with the local residents of various religions, and with the Turkish vizier are related with great sympathy and humanity for all the characters. The book is wise and perceptive. The translation is excellent.

A great novel about Balkans, and Europe, and life. The French Consul's sojourn in Travnik is beautifully rendered, and Andric describes well the social tensions among the various peoples of Bosnia and a Frenchman's difficulty making sense of Balkan life. I can't recommend it highly enough, and it is certainly as good as the more famous Bridge on the Drina, and perhaps better.

This is one of those rare perfect books. For my taste at least. I was amazed by the first page, and then by every other until the end. Fantastic! This is the only Yugoslav (that's Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegran, and Macedonian) Nobel prize winner at his best. I think, I only read The Bridge on the Drina by him. And from this one I was expecting less, but got at least as much. In fact, if one of the two books is better than the other, then they both are. And they compare favourably to just about anything there is.
The scene is set in Travnik, Bosnia, in the early 19th century, a time when Napoleon was at his peak, Austria very strong, and Turkey still in control of much of the Balkans. Travnik was a vizier town at the time, which made it important enough for the French and Austrians to send their consuls there. Obviously, a lot of historical research preceded this book, but the blend of history and fiction is so perfect that we never know where history stops and fiction begins.
The story never leaves Travnik, although the tensions between France and Austria, the rebellion of Serbs, Napoleon's march to Moscow and his final defeat, are all reflected in the lives of people of Travnik, especially the two consuls and the vizier. But, there's no point in telling you the story, my mission here is to persuade you that this is literary genious at work on every page. Perfect in describing landscape, characters, events, a master of dialogues.

It has taken me 15 years to actually read this novel. I saw it in a bookstore many years ago and bought it because the author won the Nobel--not knowing anything about Ivo Andric nor even what the book was about. But somehow I felt that I just had to read it.

As one reviewer noted, in the beginning the story is slow. Slow enough that one might become discouraged from continuing. In fact this happened to me a few times over the years. But for some odd reason this time I saw the beginning differently:

Bosnian Chronicle starts out like a beautiful minuet dance--between consels of the Napolean, Austrian and Ottoman Empires. The minuet is graceful, tenative, diplomatic. Each consel is sent to Travnik, Bosnia, with their charge to position their respective empires in a Muslem village on an important trade route located in a remote narrow valley. This image of a minuet, and of a beautiful gorge dense with lushness propelled me through the first 200 pages. A graceful dance of quiet diplomacy between consels--some with underlying fears and doubts, some with blind ambition, some with the gift of insight, all from different cultures.

What also inspired me was the very profound fact that the author, Ivo Andric--who earned a PhD in History, was also the Yugoslav Ambassador to Germany at the time Hitler invaded Yugoslavia. Andric was put under house arrest in Travnik for four years by the Nazis. The image of Andric the ambassador, sitting at his desk writing this novel under these constraints and conditions seldom left my mind.

It is so very interesting to me that Andric chose to write about the demise of the Napoleon Empire from the view of a tiny Yugoslavian village at a time like this--the rise of Nazi Germany. Andric momentarily introduces a Jewish man who lives among the Travnik Muslems at the very beginning of the novel. But not until the last twenty-five pages of this 400 plus page story does this person reappear, as a helper to Daville, the French consel and main character. Tears come to my eyes even now, as how Andric so subtley brings us back to what was happening in the real world as his pen was writing this very subtle story through the analogy of Napoleon.

This book is indeed a masterpiece. And Andric received the Nobel Prize in 1961 for good reason.

First off, yes it's a masterpiece. Few people would find ground to argue otherwise, and those that do will find it a very thin shelf of subjective opinion they stand on.

One thing that should be mentioned though, is that it also stands as a rare form of literature, a unique `genre'. The chronicle, which might seem obvious, but it's always overlooked. The Bridge on the Drina is another example, both of which were written concurrently, in a Belgrade apartment during the massive destruction inflicted on the city from both sides of WW2. It's not incidental that the very last words Andric writes is, `Ivo Andric, Belgrade, April 1942.' Nor is it accidental that Andric stayed throughout, while many fled in all directions. The need for both chronicles came from what must have felt like the imminent demolition of Andric himself, his history and his people. And it should be pointed out that this fate has in fact happened in the course of European history, and that it always has been a very real potential for the people of the Balkans. The Ottomans followed the Romans, and were a ceaseless threat for hundreds of years. The Austro-Hungarians equally from the opposite direction. Others like Napoleonic France, Imperial Russia, Germany and Catholic Italy also had driving interests. Andric paints this world with incredible skill, since while it may seem overwhelming, it is always profoundly interesting. Andric was a lifelong diplomat, and his insights into how pressure is brought to bare, one political interest onto another, is strikingly perceptive, as relevant as it is current. As a chronicle, Andric is never forced to follow a narrative progression. The emphasis is always on the people that have arrived at these vast European crossroads from all quarters. The portraits we find are so detailed and so varied the reader is constantly awed by the master's genius in presenting them to us so vividly. It should be emphasized that a chronicle is not a history. Napoleon wages his wars, always on the periphery of the Bosnian Chronicles, but the shock waves are felt through everyone living in Travnik, the focus of this book. The same kinds of shock waves are felt with various palace coups in Istanbul.

The chronicles, both this book and the Bridge on the Drina, are always about living, breathing, people; and these characters are Andric's great gift to his reader. His genius is giving us entry into such diverse lives so vividly. We walk away feeling our personal humanity has been nourished and enriched. Then we stop and think about that man in Belgrade, April 1942, and it just seems impossible, terrible, and wonderful.

The "Bosnian Chronicles" is an interesting novel because it is written in a style that shows a transition from 19th to 20th century writing. Much of the novel has a sweep of time, character, and historical events so promenient in novels from Dickens, Tolstoy, and other great 19th century novelists. Yet, the novel also moves into that 20th character development and examination that marks writers like Hemingway, Faulkner, or Fitzgerald.

The novel takes a strong third person perspective with that ever present God's eye view of a French consul, an Austrian consul, and the inhabitants of a Muslim village in Bosnia. It occurs at the turn of the 17th century during the rise and fall of Napoleon. We are treated to both a psychological and sociological presentation of how people from three different nations and two different religious cultures meet and interact with each other on the borders of great powers (France, Austria, Russia, and Turkey) as they cope with the effects of those great and distant powers on their daily lives.

Ivo Andric wrote this novel as part of a trilogy during World War II when he was under house arrest. Andric was born in Bosnia and lived through the craziness of Muslim-Christian conflicts and how they played out in the march of Fascism and the rise of nationalism. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to have lived through that time in that region and Andric provides a window on it by putting all the "players" together in a small, isolated village, but in a different time period. In a way, this novel is like "Old Man and the Sea" where the author deliberately simplifies a big story by putting all the characters and action in a much smaller scene. Andric writes about religion, politics, war, family, and community from a perspective of widely divergent people. It is quite compelling.

You would probably enjoy this novel if you like novels as both an art form and a form of wisdom expression. If you're looking for a fun read or something light and easy, this would probably be a boring waste of time for you.

I very much enjoyed Andric's "The Bridge Over the Drina", but reluctantly gave up on this book after 104 prolix pages. This is one of those cases where an abridged version would be a definite improvement. Incidentally, the version I read was translated by Kenneth Johnstone, and was entitled "Bosnian Story" instead of "Bosnian Chronicle".