Siege of Sarajevo

The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway, 2008

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A novel of the time of siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996. The city of Sarajevo was proud host to the winter Olympics of 1984. Within a few years, Yugoslavia was torn apart by multiple wars, one part of which was the terrible siege of Sarajevo. Galloway points out that two Serbian war criminals responsible for much of the human carnage are still at large.

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The novel is built around a real world tragedy when a shell killed 22 people waiting in line to buy bread. Four characters feature: The cellist was principle cellist at the destroyed Sarajevo Opera House. He resolves to play Albinoni’s Adagio for 22 consecutive days at the site of the killing.

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Arrow is a university sharpshooter recruited by the military commander, a friend of her now dead father, as a sniper. She agrees on condition that she work alone and chooses her own targets. She proves a natural, working purely from instinct. The commander asks her to break her rules and try to protect the Cellist.

Kenan is a family man who ventures out of his apartment every four or five days to get water from the brewery across the river. He risks sniper fire and shells on each trip.

Dragan is 64 and has sent his wife and 19 year old son to Italy to escape the carnage. His apartment has been destroyed and he lives uneasily with his sister and brother-in-law. He works at a bakery and is able to bring bread home from work. We follow the lives of these four characters through the 22 days that the cellist plays his adagio.

The novel is short but very effecting, evoking life and death in this once beautiful city. Another compelling account of this time and role of snipers was the 1998 movie Shot Through the Heart directed by David Attwood. Here two friends and former Olympic competitive sharpshooters, one Serb and one Bosnian discover they must hunt one another down.

By coincidence Radovan Karadzic, one of the two at large war criminals has been arrested today July 22. For 11 years he has been in Serbia, protected by both the the Serbian Orthodox church and the secret police of Serbia. This reminds us of the movie The Statement with Michael Caine and Tilda Swinton where Caine plays a French war criminal protected for years by the Catholic church and powerful politicians in France. Now only Ratko Mladic remains at large.