60 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Balkan Chronicle, October 27, 1998
This review is from: The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction) (Paperback)
Readers who enjoyed "One Hundred Years of Solitude" will love this book, for while it is similar in feel to that masterpiece, it is broader in scope. Readers looking for insight into the labyrinth of Balkan history will find here a useful starting point. At heart, this is a book about civilization and its changes. It pivots upon the contrast between the small parochial existence of the quiet Bosnian town where the bridge is the central and everlasting feature versus the wider world of Balkan politics where Ottoman Turkey, Orthodox Serbia, and Catholic Austria-Hungary wage a centuries-long battle for political domination.
The book chronicles the bridge and the town for over three centuries. It is filled with memorable characters, soldiers, lovers, saloon-keepers, priests, and town leaders. There is the 19th-century schoolmaster who embodies the parochial village so perfectly. He is better-educated than most of the townspeople, but only slightly. This reputed wisdom gives him the arrogance to act as the town historian, a duty he fulfills by keeping a small notebook in which he fails to record historical events. Even the seminal affairs of 1878, when the region was transferred from the Ottomans to the Habsburgs, merits only a few lines in his notebook because he judges that these events are simply not terribly important. And that captures the essence of the book: events in the wider world are deemed unimportant in the village until they come, like the flood in the early pages, in a torrent of change and surprise.
Thus does the town evolve, isolated from, yet thoroughly buffeted by, the great historical affairs of the centuries. In the end Pavle the merchant finds that this myopic approach has led him to ruin. Alihodja, whose unique ability to articulate the impact of world politics on the lives of the town's provincials earns him an injured ear and a reputation as an eccentric, never quite realizes how closely his vision entwines his fate with that of the bridge itself.
The standard interpretation holds that the bridge is the symbol for the Ottoman Empire, resolute and everlasting, welcoming yet exotic, and built to standards far higher than any to which this little town can aspire. In the original title Andric uses the word for a Turkish bridge (cuprija) and not the standard Serbo-Croatian word for bridge (most). Yet at the same time, the bridge resists this symbolism. It is not a bridge from the past to the future, or from the village to the wider world, or between Christian Europe and Muslim Turkey. It is simply a sturdy stone bridge. While the uncomplicated lives of the townsfolk dip and yaw in full color, and while the ponderous events of the outside world roll on in inscrutable ways, the bridge remains unchanged. The true symbols in the book are the rich and detailed characters who live and die by the Drina river. Each has something to tell us, and none is superfluous. These characters describe for us the consequences of conflict and cooperation in a comfortable little town caught in uncomprehending suffering by its location along one of history's great fault lines. The bridge... the bridge simply spans the Drina, as it always has.
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent introduction to understanding Balkan society, January 28, 2001
This review is from: The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction) (Paperback)
The bridge on the Drina continues to stand witness to political changes in the Balkans while the ethnic mosaic of the region remains more or less static. Andric has done a remarkable job of explaining the intracies of Balkan society through his story. Using the bridge as an eyewitness to 500 years of history, we see the rise and fall of empires as a community of Serbs, Croats, Jews, Christians and Moslems live, love and work side by side.
Contrary to what the media would have us believe, the ethnic groups of the Balkans have not "hated one another for 500 years and will continue to do so." This book portrays Balkan life in a much more realistic manner than many newly published books on the subject have. If you are interested in the Balkans and are searching for a balanced view of what society was like before the current troubles, read this book. While it is fiction, the patterns of daily life, the social interactions and inter-ethnic relationships portrayed by Andric are right on the money. Little wonder this fabulous story was awarded the Pulitzer Prize when it first came out.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A captivating work - worth the read., January 6, 2002
This review is from: The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction) (Paperback)
Andric writes a fictional, yet truthful, history of the bridge at Visegrad which stood for centuries. The key to the book, from a reader interested in this from a more historical perspective rather than a literary viewpoint, is that the tensions between the different residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina are apparent. From the Turkish occupation to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the factions intertwine throughout the history of the town and the bridge. Although told, or translated, in a slow, laconic style, the writing was wonderful. The individual stories were well told and kept the history of the bridge moving forward.
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. After reading it, I felt that I understood this part of the world better -- and that I had a better perspective on my ancestors (Radenovic or Ragenovich) from Montenegro who emigrated to the US in the 19th century
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