The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction)

The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction)
by Ivo Andric

The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Ivo Andric
Translator: Lovett F. Edwards
Introduction: William H. McNeill
Edition: Paperback
Audio: Serbian (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1977-08-15
ISBN: 0226020452
Number of pages: 314
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press

Book Reviews of The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction)

Book Review: a great storyteller, not a Serb nationalist
Summary: 5 Stars

The common perception of Ivo Andric as a Bosnian writer (and one who focused on by-gone times of Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian occupation) probably limits his popularity unfairly, causing him to be perceived as a writer of parochial concerns. This great European writer is not only extremely relevant today, having a great deal to say to us in an era of ethnic conflicts and ethnic cleansing; he is also a great storyteller who deserves a place alongside the likes of Leo Perutz, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yasar Kemal, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Of course, there are much more unfortunate misperceptions of Andric. Surely the greatest injustice is the fairly common perception of Andric as a hater of Muslims. Some Serb nationalists see him as a hero, and some Bosniak Muslims see him as having provided grist for the mill of the forces which led to the massacres of their people by Serb nationalists in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s. Both are wrong, just as they are wrong in seeing Bosnian-born film director Emir Kusturica as a traitor to his people and a proponent of Serb nationalism. Probably this misperception owes much to the one of the most memorable passages in the book, one in which the impalement of a Christian Serb, ordered by the Turkish official who began the building of the bridge over the Drina in Visegrad, is described in horrifying detail. But Andric is simply providing a realistic account of the history of Bosnia, and it is useless to deny that acts of brutality were committed by the Ottomans during their occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. People who think this passage makes the novel a textbook in Serb nationalism and hatred, though, overlook several facts. The first is the fact that the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were violent times throughout Europe and this particular act of violence was not at all unusual (the most famous impaler of all times was, of course, a Christian, the Romanian Vlad Dracula). The second is the fact that the Sultan ordered the corrupt official responsible for this impalement to be replaced by an official who was a good and honest one, showing that not all Turkish administrators were bad. Third, these critics also overlook the fact that Andric is no happier about the Austro-Hungarian occupation than he was about the Ottoman one (he sees the Austrians as less brutal and more "civilized" occupiers, but he laments the destruction of the old Visegrad caused by the Austrians' rationalizing and modernizing investments). Certainly Andric does not join Serb jingoists in seeing the Ottoman bridge which gives the book its name as an undesirable foreign element, in contrast to the Serb nationalists who, in the 1990s, blew up the Ottoman bridge which is the pride of Mostar's old town (CORRECTION: THE MOSTAR BRIDGE WAS BLOWN UP BY CROATS, NOT SERBS). And the portraits of the Muslim characters are as lovingly drawn as those of the Christian and Jewish ones. It will, for example, be hard for the reader to forget Alihodja, the character with whose death the book ends. People who find hate in this book find it only because they bring it with them. Andric was not a hater.

Regarding Andric's relevance in today's world: a number of passages in this book have a prophetic quality, particularly at the end, where the beginning of the conflicts initiated by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo is described. The events recounted here concern the persecution of Serbs, but to today's well-informed reader, Andric's words will inevitably bring to mind images of the massacres of Bosniak Muslims in Visegrad, the town which serves as the setting for this book. "That wild beast, which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free. The signal was given, the barriers were down. ... A man who saw clearly and with open eyes and was then living could see how this miracle took place and how the whole of a society could, in a single day, be transformed. In a few minutes the business quarter, based on centuries of tradition, was wiped out. It is true that there had always been concealed enmities and jealousies and religious intolerance, coarseness and cruelty, but there had also been courage and fellowship and a feeling for measure and order, which restrained all these instincts within the limits of the supportable and, in the end, calmed them down and submitted them to the general interest of life in common. Men who had been leaders in the commercial quarter for forty years vanished overnight as if they had all died suddenly, together with the habits, customs and institutions which they represented."

[...]

Summary of The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction)

The Bridge on the Drina is a vivid depiction of the suffering history has imposed upon the people of Bosnia from the late 16th century to the beginning of World War I. As we seek to make sense of the current nightmare in this region, this remarkable, timely book serves as a reliable guide to its people and history.

"No better introduction to the study of Balkan and Ottoman history exists, nor do I know of any work of fiction that more persuasively introduces the reader to a civilization other than our own. It is an intellectual and emotional adventure to encounter the Ottoman world through Andric's pages in its grandiose beginning and at its tottering finale. It is, in short, a marvelous work, a masterpiece, and very much sui generis. . . . Andric's sensitive portrait of social change in distant Bosnia has revelatory force."?William H. McNeill, from the introduction

"The dreadful events occurring in Sarajevo over the past several months turn my mind to a remarkable historical novel from the land we used to call Yugoslavia, Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina."?John M. Mohan, Des Moines Sunday Register

Born in Bosnia, Ivo Andric (1892-1975) was a distinguished diplomat and novelist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961. His books include The Damned Yard: And Other Stories, and The Days of the Consuls.

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