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A review by jenn756
وقائع مدينة ترافنك by Ivo Andrić
5.0
To my mind Ivo Andric is one of the greatest novelists, on par with Tolstoy or Dickens, but sadly unrecognised. His obscurity is no doubt due to him being Bosnian - I had to import my copy from Germany and its not available on the kindle.
The `Bosnian Chronicle' is set in the Napoleonic age and describes the stationing of the French and Austrian Consuls in the small town of Travnik. It's in the fag-end of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul is beset by coups and Bosnian Viziers are regularly replaced. The Bosnian people are brutalised and held back from centuries of occupation. The gulf between East and West at this time is particularly stark, and living in what they see as a poor barbarian back-water the Consuls feel lonely and isolated.
The irony is that on a personal level they could, and occasionally do, support one another but in diplomatic terms they are enemies - France and Austria spend the period perpetually on the brink of war.
Even though he was a local to the area Andric makes no effort to gloss over life in Travnik. It's in a sunless gully between mountains, a place where summer comes late and is brief, the winters are long and harsh. It's plagued by poor roads and sensless conflicts between its population.
I enjoyed it most when Andric describes the populace - the Muslim bazaars which were a simmering melting-pot of discontent, the monks and their monastries, the occasional brutal and uncontrollable riots, the Jewish community, exiled from Spain centuries before. At the end there's a moving moment when one of the Jewish merchants voices his despair at centuries of oppression and yet their determination to hang-on come what may. Its almost as if Andric is voicing the despair of oppressed minorities everywhere.
I'm not sure it helps me understand Bosnia better, except to say time doesn't make old injustices go away, it merely smothers them temporarily.
Definitely a book worth reading, one of my favourite authors.
The `Bosnian Chronicle' is set in the Napoleonic age and describes the stationing of the French and Austrian Consuls in the small town of Travnik. It's in the fag-end of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul is beset by coups and Bosnian Viziers are regularly replaced. The Bosnian people are brutalised and held back from centuries of occupation. The gulf between East and West at this time is particularly stark, and living in what they see as a poor barbarian back-water the Consuls feel lonely and isolated.
The irony is that on a personal level they could, and occasionally do, support one another but in diplomatic terms they are enemies - France and Austria spend the period perpetually on the brink of war.
Even though he was a local to the area Andric makes no effort to gloss over life in Travnik. It's in a sunless gully between mountains, a place where summer comes late and is brief, the winters are long and harsh. It's plagued by poor roads and sensless conflicts between its population.
I enjoyed it most when Andric describes the populace - the Muslim bazaars which were a simmering melting-pot of discontent, the monks and their monastries, the occasional brutal and uncontrollable riots, the Jewish community, exiled from Spain centuries before. At the end there's a moving moment when one of the Jewish merchants voices his despair at centuries of oppression and yet their determination to hang-on come what may. Its almost as if Andric is voicing the despair of oppressed minorities everywhere.
I'm not sure it helps me understand Bosnia better, except to say time doesn't make old injustices go away, it merely smothers them temporarily.
Definitely a book worth reading, one of my favourite authors.