The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction) by Ivo Andric
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Book Reviews of The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction)
Book Review: Bridge over troubled waters . . .
Summary: 5 Stars
What immediately strikes a reader is that this is an old-fashioned kind of modern novel, with an omniscient author describing a broad sweep of social history. The location happens to be a town on the border of Bosnia and Serbia, but there's a universality of theme despite the specifics of geography, cultures, politics, and historical events. Andric seems to be saying that life has been like this for human societies everywhere. We come in all manner of dispositions into this world, and this is the way we grow up, flourish, grow old, and interact with each other, making us both individuals and members of a community.
The book, covering the centuries between the building of a bridge in the 1500s to its destruction during WWI, is a tapestry of short stories, some sad, some joyful, some romantic, some humorous, some ironic, some tragic. Each character is vividly described, as are the changing times and the shifting political fortunes that have their effect on the town and its citizens. First part of the Ottoman Empire, then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Visegrad (the author's hometown) remains home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, living together in relative peace as long as decisions in far-off capitols leave them undisturbed. The tone of the book, however, especially its ending, reflects the time in which it was written - the years of WWII when Andric's life as a diplomat was suspended and his country was occupied by German armies.
The final scene portrays a devastation and a total disruption of the town's continuity, while holding out a humanistic hope that life continues untouched elsewhere. Readers who are inheritors of age-old rivalries and keepers of memories of Balkan atrocities may no doubt take exception to the particular slant of this telling of history, finding in it glaring examples of bias. But the Nobel Prize Committee that chose Andric for its Literature Prize saw the novel correctly for what it is to the rest of the world, a story about the endurance of humans in the face of human folly.
Book Review: The definition of Epic Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
The masterpiece that won the author a Noble prize for fiction. If he was Russian, his name would follow in the same breath as Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, and he'd barely need introducing. But the literary landscape doesn't always offer the same kind of literary stage to all its masters. Some of them are almost buried in the wreckage of European history. At the epicentre of the Continent's eruptions, Andric set out an epic (this word so often overstated, here is an understatement), on the crossroads between divisive Christianity and relentless Islam, modern Imperial powers and those that began to dissolve after hundreds of years of desperate control. Written in Belgrade, during the worst of the Nazi bombing, demolishing the city as the author wrote, Andric looks back across the histories that have been written across his home-land. A substantial book that does not drag with weighty history or become mired in tearful sentimentality; does not proclaim battle inspiring philosophies or declaim political war cries. Andric finds his focus on an elegant bridge spanning a coursing river, and is mesmerized by the confluence of human destinies passing over it. His genius lies in his perception of unique human character and the ability to reveal it in all its complexity with the clear light of god-like wisdom. Third person narrative brought to its ultimate resolution, and the epic novel to its most complete expression. It deserves to be read, and perhaps, celebrated.
Book Review: An outstanding piece of European literature
Summary: 5 Stars
The author of this book is almost a perfect example of the Balkans. A Croat from Bosnia who is now fought over by all sides of the ethnic divide its almost as if what he actually wrote is forgotten.
This is a remarkable book. It is not simply a historical novel the personal lives of the people under Ottoman rule, the building of the bridge, originally a gift to the people there along with a hostel for travellers. How the Muslim population at first welcomed its construction only to have second thoughts when they realised just how much effort and burden it would put on the population to construct. The Serb rebels who try to demolish the bridge and the terrible punishment that their leader suffered when caught. How over the centuries the bridge became a focal point in the city and how the lives of the people changed due to outside events out of their control (The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of the great powers of Europe) There is one beautiful passage in this book when the Muslim population of the town wake up to find the borders of the Ottoman Empire had suddenly been redrawn hundreds of miles away and how they looked over the new map of the Balkans trying to make sense of it all.
My only complaint (and it is a small one) is why on earth did the translator refer to the Muslims as 'Turks' when (and if you read the book closely its even more obvious) they were so clearly not!
Book Review: The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric
Summary: 5 Stars
This lesser-knows European masterpiece is a type of memoir about a bridge and those who live near it. It is originally constructed at the request of a Vezir to unite East and West, a purpose that later proves unfortunately beneficial when Austria crosses it to occupy then-Serbia. The bridge becomes a point of pride for the residents of Vishegrad and is portrayed as many things- peacemaker, everlasting testament to national strength, as well as a transitory phenomenon that has a birth and death like anything else. People drift throughout the book with no central character save the village elder, Alihodja, a voice of reason who could symbolize the sensibilities of archaic tradition in the midst of war and modernity.
The political overtones and symbolism of the bridge are apparent, but this book is also full of very perceptive scenes of human behavior. People are happy, sad, drunk, duplicitous, shallow and deep, foolish and wise, and always written with a smooth accessibility that keeps the book consistently entertaining. It is also a fascinating book; I caught myself pausing frequently while reading it to pause at a simple description of the bridge under the moon, or the desolate town streets at midnight, or the nuanced characterization of a villain, and wanted to live in the small town of Vishegrad for years. Broadly exotic yet intimate, this is a rare and wonderful book.
Book Review: take a moment to think
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a yugoslav girl, we live in Holland. I was 5 yrs old when the war started, and I never understood why, I didn't even know that there were Croats, muslims, and Serbs. To me we are all YUGOSLAV. That's why I love this book so much, it doesn't judge people just because of their ethnicity. We must all stop doing that, in a history, far far ago, we were ONE NATION, when we came here from behind the Carpats. And Ivo Andric is not a Bosnian Serb nor a Bosnian Croat, he's YUGOSLAV! The four reasons why the Balkan is so f**ked up are: 1)The Byzantium Empire, they made the Serbians orthodox 2)The Ottomans, they threw in the Islam 3) Austria-Hungary, they made the Croats catholic 4) The Slavic stubborness! If Andric was alive now, he would be ashamed because of us. We do not deserve his book if we cannot use it to bring lasting peace. The war, it broke my heart, as I still have a niece in Croatia who I never even met, because my uncle was kicked out because he's a Serb. Now he's a drunk, my parents are frustrated ever since the war and my life is hell. I just want the old Yugoslavia back, with it's tourism, music (Merlin, Oliver, Neda Ukraden and Crvena Jabuka) and no more judging! Like the people in Visegrad lived in peace with eachother, even though terrible things happened when the Ottomans and Habsburgs were there, why couldn't we just do that? It's up to us....