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The cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
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The cellist of Sarajevo (original 2008; edition 2009)

by Steven Galloway, Gareth Armstrong

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2,7502475,190 (4.06)490
This brings home the reality of war and how difficult it is to retain hope in a crumbling city, while struggling daily to survive random death. Death comes to you in a shell while buying bread or in a sniper shot while crossing the street to fill water bottles. The characters resist all of this and the accompanying moral decay and somehow stay human. ( )
  moukayedr | Sep 5, 2021 |
English (241)  Spanish (2)  German (2)  Norwegian (1)  Dutch (1)  Catalan (1)  All languages (248)
Showing 1-25 of 241 (next | show all)
I flagged a lot of prose in this book mostly for its precise, dense, crushing hopelessness. Then again, it is a Slavic story. This Slavic story, however, is written by an Irishman, and so I think feigns hopelessness in some degree. Artfully. Many survive. Many times the veil of death and the greyness of war are lifted—a joke about plenty is told and retold between husband and wife, a man mentally repaints his surroundings as they were and how they may be, another hauls water for an empty old woman because it is the right thing to do, and to her peril, a sniper draws a moral line in the sand.

Why does the author sketch any hope into this story? The Irish are a race that survived 500 years of war; their survival instinct is grounded in a tolerance for calamity, for irony and a desire to drink heavily from the tonic of denial and the relief of humor. An Irish author cannot sustain nor end a story in total despair; thus, he ultimately offers civility as war’s cure, even if fleeting as with the Cellist’s hymn. The hymn is the deliberate act that unites the central characters of the story and boosts the limp heart of the city. How he makes the cellist the center is proof to me that the Irish truly can’t tell a story the way it is, they have to make it brighter than that.

Ultimately, war has limits. Arrow, a female sniper, feels war is a job. And a liability. Eventually she will be asked to do something she does not want to do, foreshadowing her demise. (p. 57) The line is not between a just and an unjust death, but a death that doesn’t matter. In choosing her line, her time of death, she reserves a dignity where “She would not let the men on the hills decide when she went below ground. P 124

A public wake. Well, the author is indeed Irish. In playing for days on end the cellist provides this venue for public grief, he reminds people of their humanness. The purpose is not to forget. “Once we forget we become a ghost.” Like Mrs. Ristovski. Does he play ‘to stop something from happening or to prevent a worsening? “Death is not just a disappearance of the flesh. When they’re content to live with death, then Sarajevo will die.” Small civilities are worth living for.

But Arrow alone prepares to pay the ultimate price in saying no to war. In confronting death, she reclaims her name, her self and Sarajevo’s identity.



( )
  NeelieOB | Jan 20, 2024 |
I flagged a lot of prose in this book mostly for its precise, dense, crushing hopelessness. Then again, it is a Slavic story. This Slavic story, however, is written by an Irishman, and so I think feigns hopelessness in some degree. Artfully. Many survive. Many times the veil of death and the greyness of war are lifted—a joke about plenty is told and retold between husband and wife, a man mentally repaints his surroundings as they were and how they may be, another hauls water for an empty old woman because it is the right thing to do, and to her peril, a sniper draws a moral line in the sand.

Why does the author sketch any hope into this story? The Irish are a race that survived 500 years of war; their survival instinct is grounded in a tolerance for calamity, for irony and a desire to drink heavily from the tonic of denial and the relief of humor. An Irish author cannot sustain nor end a story in total despair; thus, he ultimately offers civility as war’s cure, even if fleeting as with the Cellist’s hymn. The hymn is the deliberate act that unites the central characters of the story and boosts the limp heart of the city. How he makes the cellist the center is proof to me that the Irish truly can’t tell a story the way it is, they have to make it brighter than that.

Ultimately, war has limits. Arrow, a female sniper, feels war is a job. And a liability. Eventually she will be asked to do something she does not want to do, foreshadowing her demise. (p. 57) The line is not between a just and an unjust death, but a death that doesn’t matter. In choosing her line, her time of death, she reserves a dignity where “She would not let the men on the hills decide when she went below ground. P 124

A public wake. Well, the author is indeed Irish. In playing for days on end the cellist provides this venue for public grief, he reminds people of their humanness. The purpose is not to forget. “Once we forget we become a ghost.” Like Mrs. Ristovski. Does he play ‘to stop something from happening or to prevent a worsening? “Death is not just a disappearance of the flesh. When they’re content to live with death, then Sarajevo will die.” Small civilities are worth living for.

But Arrow alone prepares to pay the ultimate price in saying no to war. In confronting death, she reclaims her name, her self and Sarajevo’s identity.
( )
  NeelieOB | Jan 20, 2024 |
I was initially planning to give this book a lower score since it was so painful to read. I realized that just because it traumatized me was not a good reason to lower it. It is war and war is all around: Ukraine, Gaza/Israel and other places. This is a look back at a real event in the mind of the author when Sarajevo was under siege and a cellist decided he would play in the street for a number of days: 1 for every person killed after a massive attack on the city in that specific spot. The people whose lives are affected by the war are many: the snipers hiding in the hills to shoot anyone they can see, the counter snipers who try to kill them, including one who can no longer use her real name because she doesn't consider who she is as really her. There is the man who must walk miles every 4 days to find clean water for his family knowing at each crossing and bridge he too could be a victim of snipers. Then there is the military supposedly on their side. And through it all, the cellist comes and plays the same tune every day, beautiful and passionate. ( )
  krazy4katz | Dec 26, 2023 |
Here's what I wrote in 2009 about this read: "Four lives in the hell of Sarajevo under sieze in the mid 1990's; humanity survives. Educational and ultimately inspirational." ( )
  MGADMJK | Aug 12, 2023 |
Sad, somber, and ultimately uplifting novella that vividly shows what life was like for ordinary citizens living under the siege of Sarjevo in the early 1990's. Based on a true incident, a cellist exits his apartment at the same time each day for 22 days and plays in the street, braving the evil forces that grip the city. Twenty-two days, one for each of the victims killed in a bomb blast while waiting in line to buy bread. This small act, and how it gives back some semblance of their humanity to the embattled and shell-shocked Sarajevans frames the story beautifully. Cannot help but bring to mind today's war in Ukraine and how the fight and the resistance continue on. ( )
  Octavia78 | Jul 26, 2023 |
This is a poignant book about the dehumanizing effects of civil war. It describes how the act of one man—a cellist commemorating the victims of a mortar attack on a breadline—affected the lives of three others trapped in Sarajevo. Each, in his or her way, pushes back and allows the adagio he plays to rekindle the slumbering sparks of human decency in them.
It is a short book. Nonetheless, it felt slow-moving. The inner thoughts of each of the three as they weigh what is happening to their city are described in details. This pacing has an elegiac effect for the most part but left me feeling impatient at times. Nevertheless, the overall message of the book is clear: civilization is not a thing that has been achieved once and for all; it is recreated each day anew by small acts of kindness. ( )
1 vote HenrySt123 | May 2, 2023 |
This book was full of sorrow and hopelessness as the stories of three unrelated people unfold as they are confined within the siege of Sarajevo. There is intense hopelessness and resignation conveyed in the thoughts of the three people. These people are surrounded by depravity and their stories are how they think of this while trying to survive. the prose is done in such a way that the sorrow and hopelessness is palpable. ( )
  Kimberlyhi | Apr 15, 2023 |
possibly the hardest book I've read this year, but lovely/inspiring. ( )
  Alarine | Mar 8, 2023 |
I listened to this book on audio, and it was very well done by Gareth Armstrong. It is a snapshot of 22 days during the Bosnian war which actually lasted from 1992 to 1995. It illustrates so clearly in sparse and beautiful prose what a city and its citizens go through when they are caught in the middle of guerrilla warfare. The story focuses around three citizens that are trying to live their lives while snipers are firing at them constantly, and mortars are deployed every day. The tie that binds these three citizens together is a cellist who has vowed to play Albinoni's Adagio every day for 22 days in the spot just outside his window where 22 people waiting in a bread line lost their lives due to a mortar blast. "Arrow" is a young and gifted young woman who is one of the most well-known counter-snipers in Sarajevo, and has devoted her young life to taking out as many snipers as she can. She has pledged to protect the life of the cellist for the entire 22 days of his quest. This book is such an illuminating look at the resilience and bravery of ordinary people when they are faced with unspeakable horrors. It is a book that unflinchingly describes the unutterable despair and hopelessness of a city under siege from unknown and unseen aggression. It is a book that is well worth reading for those of us who have never had to face these kinds of dangers as we go about our daily business. We watch and observe how our three people are forever changed by the brave cellist. Music is indeed a powerful antidote to uncertainty and despair. And the strength an resilience of the human race is incredible to behold. ( )
  Romonko | Jan 12, 2023 |
Fictional depiction of the siege of Sarajevo during the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the break-up of Yugoslavia. The novel weaves together stories of three citizens of Sarajevo. These three do not know each other. The common thread is a listening to a cellist playing Albioni’s Adagio in G minor for twenty-two consecutive days, one day for each person killed by a mortar blast while standing in line for bread. The cellist risks death from sniper fire to commemorate the lives of these civilians. This novel encapsulates what life was like for the people living in Sarajevo during the siege, such as walking long distances to obtain fresh water, struggling to obtain food, dealing with a lack of electricity and other conveniences, and snipers picking people off as they cross the street.

The story is largely told through the inner thoughts of the characters. The author paints a vivid picture of what it would be like to live in a war zone, the drastic changes in the way people interact with each other, and the emotional harm inflicted by living with the threat of imminent death. For example:

Dragan is afraid of dying, but what he’s afraid of more is the time that might come between being shot and dying. He isn’t sure how long it takes to die when you’re shot in the head, if it’s instantaneous or if your consciousness remains for a few seconds, and he’s skeptical of anyone who claims to know for certain. Either way, it’s a lot better than gulping air like a fish in the bottom of a boat, watching your own blood gush into the ground and thinking whatever thoughts people have when they see themselves ending.

The author is making a statement about war, its impact on ordinary citizens (as opposed to soldiers), and the role of art in maintaining a sense of hope. This novel is not about the war itself, how it started, or any of the ethnic groups involved. It is about how people struggle to retain their humanity in the midst of death, destruction, and chaos. By placing ordinary people into these extraordinary circumstances, it allows readers to examine how they would react in a similar situation.

In the Afterword, the author explains what is based on fact and what he fictionalized. The war lasted from 1992 through 1995, but he focuses on a period of three weeks. I recommend reading a non-fiction about the Bosnian War as a companion to this novel. ( )
  Castlelass | Oct 30, 2022 |
A beautiful book about horrible war and the people who strive to survive it. ( )
  ArcherKel | Aug 17, 2022 |
This brings home the reality of war and how difficult it is to retain hope in a crumbling city, while struggling daily to survive random death. Death comes to you in a shell while buying bread or in a sniper shot while crossing the street to fill water bottles. The characters resist all of this and the accompanying moral decay and somehow stay human. ( )
  moukayedr | Sep 5, 2021 |
How do you keep your humanity in a situation of total powerlessness and violence? Stephen Galloway has his characters wrestle with their fears, their helplessness. And for him, there is not one answer or one way. “...perhaps the only thing that that will stop it from getting worse is people doing the things they know how to do." Galloway’s sparse and unsentimental prose was truly compelling.
  audrey0510 | Aug 26, 2021 |
I bought this from a local Oxfam charity shop when it caught my eye. I had intended just to drop off a load of books but as usual I came away with a couple of books. I had no prior knowledge of the author or the book but the synopsis sounded like it would make a great read.

The book is loosely based around the real life event of a cellist playing regularly in the rubble of destroyed buildings during the siege of Sarajevo. Although he is the focal point of the book the cellist actually doesn't feature all that often and is used to link the three other characters.

Arrow is a young woman who is a very effective sniper who works in an independent way from inside the city to kill people she sees as a threat to the civilians trapped in the city. She is granted a degree of leeway from a military commander which allows her to only take out targets she deems appropriate. I really liked her character and having a female sniper really added an unusual angle to the story.

Keenan and Dragan are two male characters who have to make regular trips across the war torn city in order to survive. One has to fetch water for both his family and their elderly neighbour and the other has to get bread so that his family can eat. As they separately cross the city they come across various sniper traps and the devastation of war.

This is a really good book which is well written and moving at the same time. Galloway has made some decisions which really allow the book have an emotional effect. No one is ever given their nationalistic designation, there are no Serbs or Croats, just people. The only real separation is that the people holding the city to siege are referred to as the enemy on the hills. The fact that the events in the book are based in fact makes it even more incredible.

The only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars was that I was left wanting so much more. It is a short book (220 pages) and I really would have liked to invest some time in a longer version of this story. A short book works but I think a longer one would have been even better. ( )
  Brian. | Jul 24, 2021 |
Another book which reminded me of how lucky I am, and how fortunate most citizens of the USA are. So many people world-wide lead such difficult lives, dealing with wars, disease, lack of personal freedom, terror, etc, and this book describes several during the seige of Sarajevo several years ago. It had some similarities to Scott Simon's "Pretty Birds" which I also liked.
( )
  rsutto22 | Jul 15, 2021 |
The Cellist of Sarajevo took me a lot longer to read than I would have predicted from its 235 slender pages. That's because its four-character perspective on life in wartime Sarajevo was sad, and difficult, and thoughtful, and I had to take breaks from it so as not to be caught in the undertow. This is the first novel I've read about a war that I actually was alive for and remember, and yet I don't think I focused much on it at the time, which makes me feel pretty ashamed of myself. I know the same is true for me with the many conflicts going on right now though too. The balance between going about a normal life and taking in all the suffering in the world at the same time is very delicate.

Toward the end of the book one of the characters reflects that " . . . civilization isn't a thing you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, re-created daily. It vanishes far more quickly than he ever would have thought possible (p. 223)." Through the characters' thoughts about who they and Sarajevo itself used to be versus the unthinkable world they live in and the ways they have learned to cope during the war, that message is really brought home. All in all, a really worthwhile, well-written, challenging, thought-provoking book. ( )
  CaitlinMcC | Jul 11, 2021 |
sad beautiful moving
  nancynic | Jun 16, 2021 |
Even though this novel focuses on so few people in the city of Sarajevo, it seems to really capture the frantic yet stagnated feeling of a modern city under seige. I was most interested in the story of the female snipr, Arrow, because she is so conflicted about what she is doing. She may be the best shot in Sarajevo, but shes can't condone killing people who she doesn't want to. She is put to the test when she is co-opted by the militia "protecting" the city, and she makes the difficult choice to refuse to take orders. This has a pretty extreme consequence, as they come to exact revenge, but this goes to underline how making the right choice can be the most disasterous in wartime. ( )
  JaimieRiella | Feb 25, 2021 |
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway  I should have liked this book but I didn't.
 
I found it hard to work out why that was.
 
It was well written, the story line was interesting but I found the characters somewhat 2 dimensional. It had most of the ingredients but for me it just did not fly. It walked like a duck, it looked like a duck, but no quack.
 
Sorry but there you go. ( )
  Ken-Me-Old-Mate | Sep 24, 2020 |
Despite the sympathy evoking subject I couldn't like it.

The book focusses on the lives of three different people but they seemed to think with the same voice - and that voice is the voice of the author. I found some of the philosophical/general meanderings tedious and verging on pretentious tosh. I felt the female Clint Eastwood was not at all realistic. For a better picture of female snipers one could do worse than read Svetlana Alexievich on real female soldiers (The Unwomanly Face of War). I would have preferred either interviews with the people concerned (non fiction so not for our reading group) or something entirely fictional written by a better author e.g. Helen Dunmore. I think the book would have benefited from a map of the city and surroundings. A historical introduction would have been good as well and maybe avoided the one sided view of "the men on the hills".

Using a picture of the real cellist on an early book cover and not approaching him first (according to Canadian Broadcasting Company) about the book seems dodgy to me. Galloway saying that it's all available on the internet anyway doesn't work as a justification for me. ( )
  Joe_Gargery | Sep 14, 2020 |
I read this book because I grew up in Sarajevo, left a few years before the war, so naturally I heard a lot about it and know many people there. What I would like to know is how come Galloway wrote this book? In the book he has shown keen interest and understanding of the culture, communicatiion and he has managed to produce a pretty good translation of the atmosphere of the city, probably also of the impossible, uncomprehensible war situation. The language does not work well for me, obviously, since it brings in oher currents in the book, but on the overall, and he points it out clearly, it is not a documentary, but fiction, even if it is set in the actual time and place, so it should be treated like fiction. ( )
  flydodofly | May 3, 2020 |
Forgot to mark as finished. It didn't blow me away, but was decent. I'm sure other people will get more out of it. Maybe I just wasn't in the zone. ( )
  RFellows | Apr 29, 2020 |
"A weapon does not decide whether or not to kill. A weapon is a manifestation of a decision that was already made."

The siege of Sarajevo was the longest city siege in history of modern warfare and stretched from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 and United Nations estimates were that approximately ten thousand people were killed, mainly civilians, and fifty-six thousand were wounded. At four o'clock in the afternoon on 27 May 1992 a group of people were lined up waiting to buy bread when mortar shells landed killing twenty-two and injuring seventy plus. For the next twenty-two days renowned local cellist Vedran Smailovic played at the site of the explosion to honour the dead. This selfless act was the inspiration for this novel.

The action of this book has been condensed in to twenty-two days and centre and the overlapping lives of four very different characters: the cellist, Arrow an ex-college student turned sniper, Kenan a middle-aged father of three who must make a perilous journey every four days to collect water for his family and Dragan, a sixty-four year old baker. Each are haunted by memories of the city and life before siege "every day the Sarajevo [Dragan] 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." The new reality for the city's inhabitants is that each day is a daily struggle to find enough heat, food and water to survive, where daily bombing and sniper attacks can make the normally everyday task of crossing the road a perilous task.

I was instantly grabbed by not only the story but also became immersed in the author's sparse and almost emotionless prose. As the characters feel their former selves being slowly stripped away by the war just as the city had been stripped of its culture, electricity, water, food and safety so the narrative style showed how war stripped every person of their personalities. The novel focuses on the struggle of humans to retain dignity in the face of atrocities of war but also hints at what sort of city its citizens want once the war is over.

This is a relatively quick read but I felt fully engaged with the characters' and their fellow city dwellers daily struggle and the randomness of their existence. I certainly found this a sobering read and made me appreciative of the choices that I'm able to make. As such I would thoroughly recommend it and is all the remarkable because it is based on fact.

"It is a rare gift to understand that your life is wondrous, and it won't last forever." ( )
  PilgrimJess | Apr 6, 2020 |
Simple and heartbreaking. ( )
  carliwi | Sep 23, 2019 |
It happened in war-ravaged Sarajevo in the 1990’s that twenty-two people were standing in line to buy bread and were killed by a falling mortar. The musician, a cellist, was watching from his window when he witnessed the incident. He vowed to play his cello at the site of the attack for twenty-two days in memory of those who were killed. This incident becomes the background for the fictionalized story that recounts the lives of three others as they go about daily trying to survive on the dangerous streets of Sarajevo. Kenan makes his way through the streets to get water for his family. Degan is trying to get to the bakery for a free meal. And then there is Arrow, the female sniper, who has been charged with the task of protecting the cellist from a hidden sniper. The cellist and his music serve as the catalyst that forces each of them to find meaning in their circumstances and it both helps them to rediscover their own humanity and to rekindle their faith in the human spirit.

After reading this book, I am so thankful that I live in a peaceful country where I have food and drink and can walk the streets without fear of being killed by a sniper’s bullet or by falling mortars. While the setting and theme give the reader much to ponder, the book is written such that it represents the universal struggle to survive under the worst circumstances while at the same time retaining a sense of grace and humanity.
( )
  Rdglady | Nov 20, 2018 |
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