About a bridge, a beautiful bridge. Through this bridge one finds hope. But the book is also about the passage of time and the folly of man and the peoples and cultures of the Balkans. One percieves the smallness of man. There are no clear answers. Is it foolish to hope for a better future, and what is better?
How does one judge progress? If there is kindness isn't life good? People are weak and mean and foolish, but at the same time they are kind and good and hard working. Both are tr Finished. Both are true, and both will probably always be true. I believe the book says this. Through page ; One minute I am thinking I cannot go on reading because the cruelty of one human to another is just more than I can take.
The writing moves me so, but then the lines change and the author makes me see the beauty of life. I am totally stunned. The writing flips me from one emotion to its opposite. The words in this books do this to me. This author can write, and he can see how people are - how terrible and how wonderful.
Through pPage Still marvelous. Beautiful writing. Legends and myths and history all intertwined. The bridge is built and it certainly wasn't easy. These troubles became the basis of fabulous legends. Then in the latter half of the s their was a flood more terrible than any ever before. The waters rose a good thirty feet and the bridge was submerged, only to become visible again as the river's level lowered.
The damage and devastation wrought by the flood was horrible, but of course time rolled on, life in the village continued: "So, in the kapia the terrace at the center of the bridge , between the skies, the river and the hills, generation after generation learnt not to mourn overmuch what the troubled waters had borne away. They entered there into the unconscious philosophy of the town; that life was an incomprehensible marvel, since it was incessantly wasted and spent, yet none the less it lasted and endured 'like the bridge on the Drina'.
It is easy to find pictures on the web of this beautiful eleven-arched stone bridge. How what happened became myth is fascinating. The Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Turkish cultures and their respective religious constraints are described through the history fo this bridge, the bridge over the Drina at Visegrad in Bosnia. Page 52 read: This author can write. A Nobel prize winner that can really write, that not only has a message but can truly write.
Dam this is GOOD. He makes you see beauty and he makes you see horror. There is no skimming here; you want to catch every nuance. My heart is beating and I don't know what to do with myself. I have to stop before I can go on. View all 21 comments. Feb 27, Steven Godin rated it it was amazing Shelves: the-balkans , favourites , nobel-laureates , historical-fiction. Spanning centuries in time The Bridge on the Drina is one monumental work that pulled me in right from the off. The bridge, central to the town's existence in good times and bad, ties together the stories of the locals and those who are just visiting or passing through Spanning centuries in time The Bridge on the Drina is one monumental work that pulled me in right from the off.
The bridge, central to the town's existence in good times and bad, ties together the stories of the locals and those who are just visiting or passing through. Here we have tales of brutal oppression, blossoming love, fatal misunderstandings, thrilling narrow escapes, rebellious offspring, feeble husbands, political and religious idealism, and the disillusionments of age.
I have to say, even though the book as a whole was truly amazing, its first parts focusing on the building of the bridge in the 's I found particularly engrossing, and in some strange way, although completely unconnected, it's epic historical nature at this point early on got me thinking of Tarkovsky's masterpiece Andrei Rublev, and how visually stunning this would have looked had it been a film.
From this moment on I was visualising in black and white. Don't know about anyone else, but I see books, regardless of when they were written, in either colour or black and white. Although first published in the mid 20th century, I found this had more in common with some the great 19th century novels, predominantly the ones featuring a huge cast, and despite its grand scale and depth, what makes the The Bridge on the Drina all the more remarkable is how Andric delivers tender and touching little moments throughout in regards to the way he treats these individual lives, regardless of nationality or Religion.
His diverse range of characters from Bosnians to Serbs, to Turks, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, are not simply contemporaries of one age, but follow each other through the ever changing centuries, as story succeeds story, and tragedy follows tragedy, right up to the onset of WW1.
The heated ethnic and religious conflicts that make up a good proportion of the book are handled really well, and in an ideal world the local people would be submerged to their need to get along with each other and with the many travelers and armies who passed through and sometimes contributed to the town's economic life.
But of course, things aren't as simple as that. Without judgment, Andric shows us through war and some pretty monstrous acts how ordinary folk are swept along by a troublesome tide, but that when the waters settle, for those who manage to survive, life will always stride on.
Though there are many characters that come and go, the one that resonated the strongest in the time after finishing the book was the bridge itself. View all 12 comments. Nov 30, Lea rated it it was amazing Shelves: favourites , history-historical-fiction , recommended , fiction , classic , literary-fiction.
Beautiful stories centered around one bridge, following the society and individual fates throughout centuries. It made me feel nostalgic and melancholic like most Bosnian authors make me feel. Some of the stories were too heart-breaking for me to handle, and I have to admit that the description of torture and execu Beautiful stories centered around one bridge, following the society and individual fates throughout centuries.
Some of the stories were too heart-breaking for me to handle, and I have to admit that the description of torture and execution on one part was way too explicit for me. Love the sense of oblivion and transience of time, I really felt out of this world and time contemplating the history and people that lived and died before us.
Jan 23, Jonfaith rated it it was amazing Shelves: balkan. Images and myths purport to the mythic. Ivo Andric crafted a monument to those expectations in his novel of stories.
He challenges the eternal with a construct, much as engineers spanned the natural with bridges. Once present, the innovations often appear eternal, timeless. It is a sincere hope that The Bridge on the Drina enjoys that privilege. It remains unclear whether I have finished this novel before.
Scenes like the impalement and the flood were rooted firmly in my memory. The instances and Images and myths purport to the mythic. The instances and intrusions of ideology and modernity not so much. The foreign reader approaches this accomplishment at a certain disadvantage. The primacy of certain concepts and events will be obscure to many outside of the Balkans.
The legacy of the janissaries is hardly worth a footnote to many a history textbook in, say, Canada or Norway; it is an open and ongoing discussion from Sofia to Pristina.
I was certainly unfamiliar with these traditions and legacies when I first approached The Bridge on the Drina. My experiences in the last 12 years have certainly enhanced my appreciation for this masterpiece. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend our lives. While the book focuses on the town and its inhabitants, the bridge itself is the main character, the hero, the unifying force and the rationale of this entire chronicle. The author succeeds in making his account as interesting and as full of suspense as any novel, by weaving history, myth and story together in a very natural way which allows the narrative to move fluidly from the general to the particular and back again so that the reader is swept along in the torrent of words and happenings.
There were violent times in the history of the bridge and I have to admit that I skimmed over the most harrowing episode which occurred near the beginning but fortunately, there were no more such scenes recounted. He implies that the takeover by the Hapsburg Empire towards the end of the nineteenth century and the dragging of the town into the modern age, via the railway, sounded the death knell of that peaceful co-existence. Oct 09, Amalia Gkavea rated it it was amazing Shelves: 20th-century , balkan-literature , european-culture , european-heritage , european-literature , favorites , serbia , classics , balkans , bosnia.
In fact, it always both flames and smolders and is extinguished, according to the place and the angle of view. View 2 comments. Jan 07, Paul Bryant rated it it was ok Shelves: novels. This is not a normal novel with a plot and a handful of main characters.
The bridge changes everything for the people in the otherwise unremarkable town of Drina. He finds interesting and illuminating anecdotes here and there, and characters appear, last for ten pages, then drift downstream. This is the method. They were caught and there was an excruciating detailed account of the execution by impaling of the main saboteur. That got my attention.
It was hair-raising. Two hundred pages later the only thing I could remember was the guy who got impaled. I freely concede that everyone is right about this book and I am wrong.
View all 15 comments. Thank you for reminding me that this site is still a hellish place out there - I appreciate your service. Chris Chapman Bosnian Chronicle, the 2nd in the trilogy not that the stories in the trilogy have any connection to each other in terms of plot or character is def Bosnian Chronicle, the 2nd in the trilogy not that the stories in the trilogy have any connection to each other in terms of plot or character is definitely a much more traditional novelistic narrative.
I enjoyed it, although not without its faults, the women characters in particular are terrible stereotypes I've been to Dubrovnik, multiple times, which is on just the thinnest sliver of Croatia beside the border of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Also, slightly farther northwest, I've been to Split, and several other places farther north. For years running throughout my boyhood we retur 54th book of For years running throughout my boyhood we returned to Croatia, in love with the place, perhaps five times I've been back.
It covers four centuries of Balkan history surrounding the bridge as this near-perfect indeed, perhaps, perfect structure in the middle of a storm. The novel is also, then, regarded as a "historical novel" or even a "non-fiction novel", into Capote territory. Georges Perec whom I'm very fond of said of it in Le Monde : "The wealth and variety of its fictional elements carry it so far beyond the confines of a straightforward novel, it cannot be limited to such a description.
It puts one in mind of a collection of tales, but no collection of tales not even A Thousand and One Nights or Washington Irving's stories ever possessed such a unity and continuity of theme. It also felt somewhat Sebaldian All those books that do not fit so neatly into one category. These are my favourite sorts of novels. Most of the action even takes place on the bridge itself, if not within seeing distance of it. Throughout, it is the observer as much as we are of all that befalls Bosnia and its fictional inhabitants over two centuries.
And the returning images of the bridge at the end of most chapters contained some of my favourite lines in the novel— Thus the generations renewed themselves beside the bridge and the bridge shook from itself, like dust, all the traces which transient human events had left on it and remained, when all was over, unchanged and unchangeable.
Reading the novel is almost tiring. It isn't dense per se, but the relentless moving of time throughout the novel, jumping years with every chapter, and countless characters being introduced in with every turn, the novel becomes repetitive and draining to read. I read the first pages in a day and then somehow slowed to read the final over the rest of the week. Naturally, like a short story collection, some chapters are far more interesting than others, depending on the characters involved.
Some were brilliant, the man impaled alive on the bridge, the woman escaping her marriage, the gambler risking everything he owns in one final game At times I found my interest slipping somewhat, but the chapters are never too long that it detracts too much from the general feel of the novel. But I also believe that is part of the novel's power, that thematically, the constant moving of time, constant passing of characters in and out of the narrative is indicative of its scope and purpose; that unlike the Huxley novel title, time does not have a stop.
As a character says on the penultimate page in , If they destroy here, then somewhere else someone is building.
Partly, a bridge on the Drina and hanging Balkan history from it like a baby's mobile , but also that time does not have a stop, that wars come and pass, as all things do, and in the end there will always be a bridge somewhere, on some river, and around it, countless people from all different walks of life being born and living sad or sometimes happy lives before dying, recurring like so forever.
Hence, the novel is tiring to read. Jun 04, K rated it it was amazing Shelves: european-reads , bosnia-and-herzegovina. About five years ago, an American friend of mine, whose book taste I completely respected, told me about this book. He was so enthusiastic I knew someday I would read it, even though I had never heard of the author, never heard of the book, and knew nothing about Bosnia.
I never suspected then, that I would eventually be living in Istanbul someday, be familiar with Ottoman history up close, and have walked a historic Mimar Sinan stone bridge with my very own feet.
What a book! What an author! An About five years ago, an American friend of mine, whose book taste I completely respected, told me about this book. And what a translator! This book is a haunting wonderful memoir exquisitely rendered in time and place.
A young Christian boy is taken to the Ottoman capital to serve the Ottoman Empire. He converts. Eventually, he rises to a position of advisor to the Sultan. The Balkan native decides to use his position to build a stone bridge designed by the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan to commemorate the land he came from and to glorify God.
The book "The Bridge on the Drina" is a fictionalized history of all that happened on that bridge. We often assign metaphysical powers to grand urban assets like the Eiffel Tower, but this book made the reader cherish a rural stone bridge as a precious jewel that made life grander and more meaningful for all the villagers who come in contact with it.
Could a man-made creation serve a nobler purpose? You can not read this book without feeling he has an enormous love for humanity because he can describe people at their worst, their weakest, and best with such compassion and grace, it's impossible not to love his writing for that fact alone. I found myself writing down sentences within the book just to savor their genius later.
After I finished the book, I looked the author up on Wikipedia and I realized I had no idea while reading the book what faith he was because he wrote about the Christian and Muslim villagers with such insight you could almost think he had both faiths in his family.
Ah, such is the Balkans. What a patriot this man was. He had an ability to make the whole world care about his little corner and love it as he did. I want to read everything else he has written. Sep 06, J. This book is way beyond my powers of reviewing, but I started reading it out of a sense of duty, to learn and understand more about the Balkan history and people, and then found myself completely enthralled with it. They are brought forward from the shadows with compassion, but not pathos, and yet at the same time observed at a distance, as indicative of all humanity.
The individuals he portrays have passed into legend or are fictional. Their turn in the limelight is brief, arduous, fraught with danger and often powerless - and how perfectly the last line of the book sums all this up! If there is a protagonist at all it is Alihodja, whose reaction to the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia-Herzogovina is fascinating, and gives rise to many questions and insights.
To me it is much more powerful than statistics or rationalisations by sociologists and psychologists. As an example of the poetic imagery, there is the Jewish woman, Lotte, who slaves to raise her many relations from poverty, but whose business shares, in the new economic climate,"play like dust in a high wind".
The huge symbolism, of course, and the steadfast pillar of the whole book, is the bridge, the bequest of the Grand Vizir, a gift to Allah. It is a thing beloved, as is the town to its people, and in their brief burst of life it seems eternal and unchanging. It was a privilege to be able to read this book - thanks to the translator! View all 17 comments.
Jun 30, Paul rated it it was amazing Shelves: historical-fiction. A remarkable book with a grand sweep of almost years from the building of the bridge over the Drina in the s to the First World War. There are human stories throughout interwoven with the political upheavals with various factions gaining and losing ascendancy.
The centre of the bridge is wider and this kapia becomes the meeting point for parts of the community over the centuries. It is the lives, loves and tragedies A remarkable book with a grand sweep of almost years from the building of the bridge over the Drina in the s to the First World War. It is the lives, loves and tragedies of the ordinary people of the town that dom inate the book and Andric writes with great warmth about all sections of the community.
There is periodic brutslity and armies move to and fro; rebellions and executions ensue, but the bridge is ever present. Change is slow over the first centuries, but the coming of the railway changes all that and the outside world begins to intrude.
The book ends around the time of the First World War when the bridge is partially destroyed. The historical parts of the book and the stories illustrate the despite the townspeoples innate feeling for each other and their ability to live together; the factionalism projected on them from political and religious movements sow the seeds for later conflicts. An epic novel broad in its scope and execution and it suceeds in its objectives.
View all 10 comments. Feb 23, Ila rated it it was amazing Shelves: classics , favorites. Ivo Andric's chronicle is a series of utterly engaging vignettes that bring to life Bosnia's rich and troubled history. Serbs, Croats, Jews, and Turks form the multicultural yet labile fabric of this society.
Visegrad witnesses tumultuous events- as a town in an Ottoman sanjak, protectorate under Austria-Hungary, annexation to the Dual Monarchy, and finally the Great War- each of them leaving their mark. It is a means of coming to terms with his history as well as "the definitive link between Bosnia and the East, between the place of his birth and the place of his life.
The metaphor of the bridge for the people of Bosnia and the country itself is the pivotal link throughout the novel.
One may also argue that the bridge hovers. It yearns for the vast heavens but also for the waters of the Drina. Whether it be about Fata who drowns herself in the Drina or about the Devil's coin, the narrative never loses its vitality. References to past characters abound, similar to how legends crop up in people's memories years later.
The bridge is a witness to upheavals, no matter how bloodthirsty. It persists and thrives however even then. I was reminded of Tennyson's "The brook" which refrains "For men may come and men may go but I go on forever. The bridge collapses in the end,"its broken arches long painfully toward each other" which paints a rather bleak picture. An enchanting, lyrical, and absorbing work. Stunning, sweeping and awesome fiction book that gives the history of the Balkans through the lens of the life of a bridge from the 16th century to the World War II by the Nobel Prize winning author Ivo Andric.
A must read for anyone who wants to understand the complexity of Balkan conflict. A tragic story, but very touching and beautifully written. Beautiful, broadly painted chronicle of the history of the city of Visegerad, and by extension Bosnia and Serbia. The bridge that was built in the 16th century functions as a spindle around which all kinds of individual and collective stories are woven. Main thematic background: the problematic coexistence of Muslims, Christians and Jews, and the puny vicissitudes of individual life against the unflappable permanence of structures like a bridge.
The chapter about the arrival of the Austrians ill Beautiful, broadly painted chronicle of the history of the city of Visegerad, and by extension Bosnia and Serbia. The chapter about the arrival of the Austrians illustrates nicely the advent of modernity and the adjustment problems that this created.
Jan 03, Toni rated it it was amazing Shelves: the-balkans , read , war-conflict , my-library , fiction , classics , favorites , history. In the end, it feels like history wrote the missing later chapters to the book, with the war that broke Yugoslavia in pieces finally breaking the tender balance of nationalities that lived around the bridge.
But the bridge still stood, the same as it had always been, with the eternal youth of a perfect conception, one of the great and good works of man, which do not know what it means to change and grow old and which, or so it seemed, do not share the fate of the transient things in the world. View all 4 comments. Jan 25, Joy D rated it really liked it Shelves: classicsth-century , historical-fiction , boxall-list , translated , europe , reviewed , zck.
Only when, as the fruit of this effort, the great bridge arose, men began to remember details and to embroider the creation of a real, skillfully built and lasting bridge with fabulous tales which they well knew how to weave and to remember. The story spans hundreds of years s to The bridge is wide, and contains a kapia in the center, where people can sit and chat.
Over time, the bridge becomes both a community meeting place and a focal point for conflicts. The narrative is centered around the enduring presence of the bridge. The characters come and go. But none the less it would be hard to say with certainty that this opinion is correct. Amazon Renewed Refurbished products with a warranty. The town owned its existence to the bridge and grew out of it as if from an imperishable root. I wonder also at the authority of this translation by Lovett Edwards.
Thus the bridge, uniting the two parts of the Sarajevo road, linked the town with its surrounding villages. Read more Read less. He sweeps the reader through four hundred years of rich, tumultuous history, infusing his book with every human emotion along the way. Men scrape those milky traces off the piers and sell them as medical powder to women who have no milk after giving te. There the wedding guests would usually preen themselves and get into their ranks before entering the market-place.
University of Pittsburgh Press. About a century later, the Habsburg Monarchy reclaims much of Central Europe and the northern Balkans from the Ottomans, triggering a crisis bridgee the empire. History is made as much by individual personalities as by mass movements and the upheavals created by the rise and fall of empires.
Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Reading this book is like living; there is no emotion, no experience which it does not contain. Central European University Press. Home Contact Us Help Free delivery worldwide. On this level the bridge provides not only a structural but also a symbolic link. However, one thing is clear; that between the life of the townsmen and that bridge, there existed a centuries-old bond.
It was raised by two steps and bordered by benches for which the parapet served as a back steps, benches and parapet were all made of the same shining stone. There too gathered the beggars, the maimed and the lepers, as well as the young and healthy who wanted to see and anfric seen, and all those who had something remarkable to show in produce, clothes or weapons.
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