Snipers in the hills overlook half the intersections in Sarajevo. In the streets below, two inhabitants, Dragan and Kenan, trapped, like all their neighbours, in the city, strive to go about their daily lives, trying to second guess when and where the next bullet will strike.One man, a cellist, defies this game of ‘Sarajevo Roulette’; in memory of the city’s dead, for 22 consecutive days, he becomes a sitting target as he plays Albinoni’s ‘Adagio’ in the street outside his building. Unbeknown to him, one young woman watches his performances with unflinching attention.Tense and heart-wrenching to its last page, “The Cellist of Sarajevo” shows how life under siege creates agonizing and almost impossible choices. When the mere act of crossing the street can risk lives, the human spirit is revealed in all its fortitude – and frailty.
Editorial Reviews
Review
`A grand and powerful novel about how people retain or reclaim their humanity when they are under extreme duress…Galloway’s novel does the work of a good fiction: it transports you to a situation that might be alien to you, makes it familiar, and so brings understanding. While reading The Cellist of Sarajevo you are imaginatively there, in Sarajevo, as the mortar shells are falling and snipers are seeking to kill you as you cross a street. Your mind’s eye sees, your moral sense is outraged: your full humanity is being exercised.’ Yann Martel — Yann Martel
`Though the setting is the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, this gripping novel transcends time and place. It is a universal story, and a testimony to the struggle to find meaning, grace, and humanity, even amid the most unimaginable horrors.’ —
Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
`A gripping story of Sarajevo under siege.’ —
J. M Coetzee
`For anyone who saw the Balkan wars close up, The Cellist of Sarajevo rings absolutely true. For anyone who didn’t, it will be a revelation.’ —
Christopher Hope
`I cannot imagine a lovelier, more beautifully wrought book about the depravity of war as The Cellist of Sarajevo. Each chapter is a brief glimpse at yet another aspect of the mind, the heart, the soul – altogether Galloway gives us fine, deep notes of human music which will remain long after the final page.’ —
Z. Z. Packer
About the Author
Steven Galloway was born in Vancouver in 1975. He is the author of two previous novels. The Cellist of Sarajevo is his first novel to be published in the UK.
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