Steven Galloway – The Cellist of Sarajevo

ISBN: 978 1 8435 7396

We went to one of the Balti places in Brick Lane. She said she was born and brought up in the beautiful city of Sarajevo. ‘ So Bosnian,’ I said.

‘I am Jugoslavian,’ she said. It was almost a reprimand. My next question would have been, Croatian, Muslim or Serb? But having tried to dismember her identity once I couldn’t chop it into three more little pieces. The warlords,gangsters and the great powers of the world had done that to her country and had coerced me into accepting their version of history. She told me to read this novel.

The siege of Sarajevo lasted for almost 4 years, 10,000 people were killed, 329 shells hit the city every day and more than 100,000 homes were damaged. This is a story about 4 citizens struggling to survive and to preserve their identities as citizens of Sarajevo, and to keep their humanity whilst the city which defines them is being reduced to rubble. One man spends each day going to buy bread, another risks his life every day fetching water. A young woman has willed herself into a new persona which enables her to shoot the enemy snipers on the hills. She is assigned to protect the cellist who, with no regard for his own safety, plays Albinoni’s Adagio at four in the afternoon each day in memory of those who were massacred on the spot where he plays…

Read it.

I hope she will one day take me to Sarajevo.

Reviewed By: Graham Chadwick

Posted in Book Reviews