The Cellist of Sarajevo opens with a fictionalized account of a true story from the siege of Sarajevo: In 1992, on the 27th of May, 22 people were killed by a mortar attack while waiting in line for bread. In response, Vedran Smailovic, a local cellist, resolved to sit in the street and play Albinoni’s’ Adagio in G Minor once a day for 22 days in honour of each person killed.
Three Interwoven Stories
From there, the novel follows the steps and thoughts of three people in the city. There is Kenan, a husband and father on a dangerous trek to get fresh water for his family, worried that he is a coward, ashamed of his fear of death. Dragan, who has sent his wife and son to Italy, refuses to speak to any of his friends and coworkers, avoiding any kind of attachment to people so likely to be killed this day or the next. And Arrow, a young counter sniper, struggles to protect her city from the men on the hills and to keep her past, innocent self from disappearing entirely.
The men on the hills make deadly sport of picking off the terrified inhabitants of Sarajevo, one by one. Kenan runs from mortars in his cross-city trek for water. Dragan risks ending up in a sniper’s sights while crossing a bridge to find food.
In the middle of the chaos is the cellist, whose determination to play the Adagio each day is spoken of throughout the city. Arrow, assigned to protect the cellist from enemy snipers, watches as citizens brave the streets to listen to the Adagio, to escape into the music for a few moments each day.
Each of these characters struggles to survive and to make some sense of how (and whether) they can continue to live with their individual terrors, how to retain hope for a day without war, and how to live once again in a logical world when that day arrives.
Galloway’s novel is a fluid melding of exposition and scene; the reader journeys with the characters through the deadly streets of Sarajevo, hearing their thoughts and viewing wartime scenes of destruction through their eyes. Underlying the novel is a strange and bittersweet hope that intertwines itself with the despair of war.
Historical Accuracy
Galloway has taken the essential facts of the war in Sarajevo, which began in March of 1992 and lasted until November of 1995, and used them as the backdrop of his novel. The timeline of smaller events within that war has been altered somewhat from reality; Galloway has compacted events that took place over three years into the space of a month.
Still, the main facts of the conflict, its causes and its casualties, are true to real life. Galloway says in the novel’s afterword that he hopes, despite the liberties of the novel’s timeline, that “the spirit of the book is true.”
The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway, was published in 2008 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada.
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