Customer Reviews

Cellist of Sarajevo

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a novel so well-written and thought-provoking that not only did I read it in one sitting, but the very next night I read it again. I would encourage everyone to read the excerpt available via the Search-Inside feature, for it introduces the 28-year-old female sniper who goes by the pseudonym Arrow "so that the person who fought and killed could someday be put away." So riveting is her thinking and so powerful the last sentence of the novel that her story will stay vividly with me for a lifetime.

Other reviews, including the excellent one from the Washington Post (click on "See all editorial reviews"), have rightly focused on the characters around which the novel is centered. But also compelling is the plight of the city itself. Although Sarajevo became familiar to me during the Olympic games, one does not need to have seen the pre-war city to shudder at what happened to it. As one of the characters takes circuitous routes to get to his work and food, he recalls its past as he's faced with its present: "Every day," he muses, "the Sarajevo he thinks he remembers slips away from him a little at a time, like water cupped in the palms of his hands, and when it's gone, he wonders what will be left. He isn't sure what it will be like to live without remembering how life used to be, what it was like to live in a beautiful city." Or, I thought, what it would be like to try to cope with the destruction of wherever one lives, whatever the cause. In more ways than one, the author of "The Kite Runner" was absolutely correct when he called "The Cellist of Sarajevo" a "universal story."

NOTE: When I went online to find out more about Vedran Smailovic, the man who did indeed play for 22 days at the site where 22 people had been killed in Sarajevo, I discovered a fascinating article in the London Times which details at length the cellist's extreme displeasure at finding his photograph on the original dust jacket of this book and his privacy thus invaded. The article, which also includes author Steven Galloway's reaction to Smailovic's dismay at being used as a character in a work of fiction, is most easily accessed by going to the external links under the entry for Smailovic in Wikipedia.

NOTE: For those who, after reading this novel, are interested in learning more about life during the siege of Sarajevo, see my note about Scott Simon's Pretty Birds: A Novel in comment #6. Additionally, Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Wartime Sarajevo Revised Edition provides a 13-year-old girl's poignant non-fiction account. For those wondering about other books the author of "The Cellist..." has written, yet another memorable read awaits in his Ascension: A Novel.

Steven Galloway's spare novel The Cellist of Sarajevo will be haunting me for a long time. I honestly couldn't tell you when a work of fiction made me stop and think so hard about the world we live in.

As the novels opens, the siege of Sarajevo is underway, and 22 innocent civilians have just died from a shelling attack while they were waiting in line to buy bread. The eponymous cellist watched it all from his window. They were his friends and neighbors. For reasons never explained (and without need of explanation) the unnamed cellist decides he will play an adagio on the spot of the attack for the next 22 days.

This small gesture of beauty in the midst of senseless violence and horror makes the man a target. The attackers of the city, described only as "the men on the hill" will want to make a lesson of him--though exactly what that lesson is I'm not sure. The military men defending the city want the cellist protected. They assign that job to the second of four central characters the novel revolves around. She is a sniper, going only by the name Arrow. She was once a happy student at the University, but now she is a weapon in human form. Every day she struggles with her personal moral compass.

The third character is Kenan, a mild-mannered husband and father. The gauntlet he runs every few days is the long trek across town to collect fresh water for his family. No one is Sarajevo is safe. Every time they step outside, they are facing death (although staying inside is no safer with buildings being bombed daily). Kenan's terror at leaving home is echoed by the fourth character, Dagnan, a baker on the way to work who is literally paralyzed by the prospect of crossing the street. If he crosses the street, will he be shot? If he doesn't cross the street, how will he eat?

The characters in this novel are living in a world gone mad. And it wasn't decades ago. It wasn't a third world country. It was barely a 12 years ago in a major European city. I was a young adult at the time, largely ignoring the news. Reading this (mercifully) short, profoundly moving story sent me to the history books trying to understand what this conflict was about. I still don't understand. But this novel gave me a new comprehension of what war really means. Galloway brought war into a world very familiar to me. It kept me awake at night. This is a novel that should be read by all thinking people.

I don't do many reviews - but felt compelled to offer one for this great book. It is a story that reminds us what makes us both good and evil - great and small - wise and insanely stupid - heroes and villians, all at the same time. Steven Galloway writes in a way that makes you feel that you not only know the people that he is writing about - but know them as friends or neighbors who you have known for a very long time.

It is the kind of page turner that will make short work of a weekend - and bring both a smile and a tear if there is any human in you...

I bought this book in an airport and read it in almost one sitting. The subject, historical facts, and excellent cover reviews from esteemed authors made it a must read for me.

Why 3 stars only? The story framework is laid out ingeniously, the characters well picked and presented, beautiful images, the telling goes well and tension builds up to a point... and then... then there's not much more unfolding. I got the same images and thoughts, repeated in elegiac tone and not bringing additional value to the story.

If you don't know much about the events in the 1990s in Bosnia then you can probably enjoy the story for its universal values. But if you've followed the events it's hard to get transposed into a poetic state of mind and keep it till the end of the story. I had a co-worker, in 1993-1995, who had recently fled Sarajevo with one daughter to Canada. The rest of their family had been killed. It was incredible to see the tension building in this educated, intelligent, and warm person in an unexpected contact with another co-worker, who happened to be from the "other side". I expected (I wished) the book to achieve a more forceful message.

As a coincidence, Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serb army leader and war criminal, was caught a few days ago,

Today happens to be the 16th anniversary of the mortar attack and as I read a news article about commemorating the victims(26) in Sarajevo I felt an urge to write a review about this book. I finished it recently and I felt that the author was able to capture the spirit of the people and what they went through being under siege. Not extremely graphic but with enough left for anyone's imagination to experience the horrors of war in their own mind and empathize with people of Sarajevo or any other human being experiencing war in modern times. Another thing I liked about the book is that the author stayed away from identifying the aggressors, causes and politics of the war and concentrated on survival and humanness of innocent civilians who seem to parish by hundreds of thousands in times of war. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get a perspective on how a human spirit struggles through a war that appears to have no end.

On May 27, 1992, twenty-two people died in a mortar attack in beseiged Sarajevo. They were waiting to buy bread. Vedran Smailovic, a cellist, appeared in the market and played Tomaso Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor for twenty-two days, commemorating this senseless, isolated, violence.

Using this event as inspiration, Steven Galloway has crafted a novel that ranks among the best of the year. "The Cellist of Sarajevo" weaves the stories of four of Sarajevo's citizens around the daily concert. Dragan, a sixty-two year old baker, stands paralyzed at a bridge. Kenan, husband and father, journeys to the brewery where, every four days, he fills plastic bottles with water for his family and a contrary elderly woman who lives in his building. Arrow, once a member of the university shooting team, has become a sniper, and she is charged with protecting the cellist, who is always a subtle backdrop to the entire tale.

Galloway gives a nuanced novel that questions our humanity, morality, and eventually Europe's and the world's indifference to the fate of Sarajevo and its people. There is nothing predictable or cliche. The prose is sparse, almost as gray and dusty as the destroyed city. His use of repetition nearly poetic.

At the heart of the novel is Tomasino's Adagio in G Minor, a haunting piece of music, itself recreated from the ashes of Dresden.

Perhaps a simple hello, a single act of charity, a bit of bravado, or an act of selfless protection can, apart, redeem a culture and a society.

Having spent time in Sarajevo several years after the war, I was curious to see how author Steven Galloway would portray the events. I am in no way disappointed, and frankly am quite impressed with this novel. Centering around four main characters--Arrow, Kenan, Dragan, and the cellist--we follow the story of those trapped in Sarajevo during the siege. We are also confronted with choices which, in ordinary life are routine, become moral choices (and resistance) in the context of war. The war has perverted relationships, and basic human courtesy, in ways that none of the characters are comfortable with.

We get to share their thoughts and decisions as we finish the novel.

In some ways the themes are not new. Viktor Frankl taught us about the power of human choice in the worst of all conditions. Though I am certainly less well-read than many, Milan Kundera has dealt extensively with responses to inhuman authority. The Cellist of Sarajevo addresses all these themes.

So what makes this book different? Perhaps it is the author's art and a well-told story. Perhaps it is my sense that I can to some tiny degree sense a bit of what the people in Sarajevo might have felt. Perhaps it was the fact that I have been to Sarajevo and have seen the ever-present signs of war.

Whatever it is...I am impressed with this book. I seriously thought about giving it five stars. But no matter the rating, you could do far worse than spending a few hours with The Cellist of Sarajevo. This was a great read.

This book alternately mesmerizes and inflames. Its depiction of the siege of Sarajevo manages to tell something universal and quotidian at the same time. Its universal themes of life, death, hope, and despair are delicately balanced by its success in providing a sense of the everyday lives of a handful of Sarajevans seeking to negotiate the dangerous streets and byways of this war-torn city. The cellist of Sarajevo, nowhere given a name, serves as a magnet for sociality and a center for wide-ranging commentary and interpretation. For many, his actions serve as a mirror to the souls of the city's inhabitants and their estimate of the possibilities for a better future beyond war. The work is also a trenchant critique of the ravages of war and their impact on the humanity of all the combatants.

For these reasons and so many more, it is so sad that the real-life Cellist of Sarajevo has taken umbrage at this book's publication. His outrage toward the book and its author mistakes the role of the fictional cellist as the central figure in the book and therefore an assessment of his motives. It is really the characters who go about their daily lives amidst the devastation, risking their chance death by the hands of the mountain snipers, and yet mustering the courage to hope beyond the seemingly hopeless situation who are the true heroes. It is they--Dragan, Emina, Kenan, and ultimately Arrow--more than he who in this book find resources among the ruins of their formerly lovely city to keep on going and discover forbearance in universal things that matter to us all if we are to retain our humanity, when anger, hatred, and violence would be the greater temptation.

It is simply hard to imagine daily life in Sarajevo during the fighting there between Serb and Yugoslav soldiers, a time when anyone was considered a legitimate target for the daily sniper and mortar fire that targeted the city. But Steven Galloway's The Cellist of Sarajevo makes it a little easier to understand what it must have been like for those who did not escape before it was too late for them to get out.

The Cellist of Sarajevo is based on a real event that occurred in Sarajevo in 1992 after twenty-two of its citizens were killed in a brutal mortar attack while standing in line for bread. Vedran Smailovic, a professional musician, decided to honor those who died that day by playing his cello for twenty-two consecutive days at the site of the massacre, one day in honor of each of those who died.

Galloway uses that act of immense courage as the centerpiece of his story, a story he tells through the eyes of four people who never actually meet on the dangerous streets of the city. In addition to the cellist, there are alternating segments about a female sniper named Arrow and two men who must negotiate the dangerous bridges and intersections of Sarajevo in order to find the food and water necessary for their survival.

The young sniper, a former university student who shed her given name and christened herself Arrow when she began her new life as a sniper, is assigned the near-impossible task of protecting the cellist from enemy sniper fire during his daily street performance. She is a soldier with a conscience, so determined that she will target only enemy combatants that she eventually places her own life in jeopardy by refusing to kill a civilian she is ordered to shoot.

Kenan, father of two young children, makes a regular trek to the local brewery in order to gather the water supply that his wife and children so desperately need for their survival. It is not a short walk and he knows that one of the snipers hidden in the hills that surround the city could choose him as a random target at any moment. But he returns to the brewery every few days.

Dagnan is a baker who has to make his way across the city each day to get to his job, where he is paid in the bread that he helps to bake, bread upon which he depends for his survival and for its use as a currency he can barter for his other needs. Dagnan, who managed to convince his wife and son to leave the city before the siege made it impossible for others to escape, has cut himself from everyone he knew before the war, something he comes to regret.

The Cellist of Sarajevo explores what happens to people when they are faced with the possibility of sudden death on a daily basis, when their government can do very little to protect or help them, when their days have to be spent in search of the things they need to stay alive for another week. Will they be able to retain their humanity and charitable instincts to help those in worse shape, or who are weaker than themselves, or will they allow their society to become one of every man for himself? What are they willing to do to keep themselves and their families alive?

Steven Galloway has written a book that will leave his readers wondering exactly that about themselves.

At first I was skeptical about how well someone who did not live through the siege could write about it, but I was positively surprised. This very small, fictional novel tells the story of four people during the siege of Sarajevo. One is the cellist, who played his cello at the market massacre site for one day for each victim. However, it is more about the other three characters that move around him. One spends the entire book simply trying to get from his apartment building to the Pivnica and then back home, to fill up his empty bottles with water for his family and for an elderly neighbor who he does not even like. Another is trying to get across the city to the bakery where he works - on his day off - so he can get a free meal. The third is a female sniper, a "defender" assigned to protect the cellist. I thought was quite interesting how the author chose to focus on the personal struggles of these characters to survive the unspeakable, instead of on the complex political/ethnic/religious components of the war. He never once mentions religion or ethnicity, although it is clear that there are the people of Sarajevo, there are the defenders, and there are "the men on the hills." After I finished the book (and promptly re-read it); I discovered that the real Cellist was not consulted and is apparently quite angry about the book. Nevertheless, it made the siege much more real to me, and I feel quite differently walking through the streets of Sarajevo now that I have read it. I will never look at the Pivnica the same way, either.