The siege of Sarajevo
lasted some four years. Steven Galloway invites us to experience it for 3
weeks, through the lives of Kenan, a young man whose life seems to
revolve round the hugely difficult and dangerous task of getting water for his
family: of Dragan, an older man whose family have fled to Italy, and who works,
when work is there, in a bakery: and of Arrow, a young female sniper, who kills
only soldiers, not her fellow-citizens. Theirs is a life of drudgery,
deprivation and extreme and daily danger.
Like everyone in the city who
experiences it, they find the cello player who plays, despite the risks, every
day for 22 days to commemorate the 22 lives lost as they queued for bread becomes a
compelling presence in their existences. I found the book compelling too, a
stripped down narrative that invites a comparison between the formerly
civilised and cultured city of Sarajevo,
and the squalid frightening place it had become, with little food, transport,
comforts or amenities of any kind. There is no plot as such. The
unremitting sameness of the struggle to stay alive and to defend the much-loved
city is the story. A good book. A thought-provoking book.
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