The Cellist of Sarajevo (2009) is set in Sarajevo in 1992.
It begins with the Siege of Sarajevo. The forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 and are fighting the Serb paramilitaries who want to remain attached to Yugoslavia. In this book, the three years of the Siege (1992-1995) are compressed into one month.
A cellist sees the Opera Hall fall and a bomb strike a line of people queuing for bread. The next day, in his tuxedo, he takes his bow and cello to the rubble and plays Albinoni’s Adagio—a sad tune. He wants to do this for twenty-two days: the number of his friends and neighbours killed in the bombing. Every day at four o’clock. One tune.
Kenan is 40 years old and lives with his wife and children in a home that has not had regular electricity or water for a month. Every four days he makes the dangerous journey to fetch clean water in his eight canisters—six of his own, with handles, and two without handles for his neighbour, ‘a woman who has never had a kind word to say to him.’
Dragan, who is 64 and still has a job, lives with his sister and her family. He managed to get his wife and his nineteen-year-old son out of the city before the bombing. He goes out to the bakery, an hour’s walk away, to queue for bread.
Sarajevo roulette is the luck of dodging sniper bullets, bombs, and shrapnel. ‘The trick is to keep your movements random but not frenetic.’ A dog wanders the streets. Dragan wonders whether snipers would kill a dog. The snipers think ‘choosing a target can be a real art.’
A 28-year-old female sniper, called Arrow, has her sights directly on the cellist. How many other snipers have their sights on the cellist? She has always been different from the other soldiers in her army. They kill unarmed men, women, and children, but she only kills soldiers. This time, she sets herself a special mission.
The cellist is a sitting target—obvious to everyone, and slow to move. People stop and listen, briefly. Some lay flowers at his feet, but they are not for him; they are for the fallen.
This is an excellent story of resistance through daily regular routines, through the love of music, and the need for subtle ways to honour the dead. It is about the lives of four main characters who face decisions every day—important decisions or small decisions—innocent decisions or deadly decisions—that can change lives in an instant. Inspired by a true story, The Cellist of Sarajevo, is poignant, evocative, suspenseful, dramatic, intense, and thought-provoking.
MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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