Book #90: The Cellist of Sarajevo

Title: The Cellist of Sarajevo
Author: Steven Galloway

I added The Cellist of Sarajevo to my Kindle on recommendation from Melissa at Gerbera Daisy Diaries, who said it was one of the best books she's read recently, and she's read a lot. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I didn't know much of the back story of the conflict that rendered Sarajevo a war zone in the mid-90s, and had certainly never heard of Vedran Smailovic, the cellist who honored the 22 people killed in a bread line in 1992 by playing his cello in the spot of the massacre every day for 22 days, despite the fact that his life was constantly in danger from snipers. I read most of the novel yesterday on our drive from Salt Lake to Moab, where internet access is spotty, so I wasn't able to educate myself about the story until I was almost done with it.

The Cellist of Sarajevo is a beautifully-written, short, spare novel. Galloway tells the story of four or five of the residents of Sarajevo during the siege (Galloway compresses the siege, which really lasted almost four years, into the span of a few months for the sake of the story), and captures their fear, their despair, their cowardice, their bravery, and ultimately their hope. Although the story was definitely changed for the sake of the novel, it, like other great fictionalized accounts of historical people and events (think A Beautiful Mind) captured the essence of what life was like during the siege. Interestingly enough, Smailovic was not happy about his portrayal in the book and demanded compensation from Galloway.