Told by four distinct voices, “The Cellist of Sarajevo,” by Steven Galloway describes in chilling detail the grizzly circumstances surrounding the 1992-1996 Siege of Sarajevo and the toll it took on its citizens. Spare and haunting in its prose, this novel grabs you by the throat almost immediately with its quiet intensity, and is very hard to put down until you’ve digested the final sentences.

One day, while waiting in line to buy bread, twenty two Sarajevo residents are killed by mortar attack. A cellist in a nearby apartment witnesses the incident and decides he will play Tomaso Albinoni’s “Adagio” every day at 4:00 p.m. for twenty two days in tribute to these lost souls. It is a terrifying and dangerous undertaking, but to the cellist it is the only thing he can think of that will offer hope to the crushed faith of the citizenry.

A young sniper is assigned the duty of making sure the cellist survives long enough to complete his task. She is forced to make an abrupt decision that has a lasting effect on her and, ultimately, her future in the conflict.

A young father is making his weekly trek to the brewery to get water for his family and, resentfully, his old neighbor and all around him are shelled buildings and streets filled with blood.

A sixty-ish gentleman is trying to get to the bakery where he works. He managed to get his wife and eighteen year old son out of the city before the war started and thinks they are in Italy, if they are still alive. To get to the bakery he has to go through one of the city’s most dangerous intersections and describes how different people tackle the job of crossing the street amidst the bullets of snipers:

“Some step out and begin to run as though there’s a rain cloud over this part of the street and they don’t want to get any wetter than necessary…There are others who hover for a second and then run as fast as they can until they reach the other side. They make this brief frenetic dash and then keep walking as though nothing happened.”

The theme that the author so vividly presents to us is the idea that these citizens go about their daily routines, amid the horrors of war, making little adjustments as they go along. They care for each other in a more intimate way than they ever thought possible, yet at the same time, are bothered by trivial issues and the fact that they can’t act as bravely as some others. It’s the way war in a city would be, I imagine, and when it is portrayed in this manner, it becomes so real.

Another theme that the author offers is how the war changes the perception of the city. The characters begin to doubt what they remember as THEIR city:

“There is no way to tell which version of a lie is the truth. Is the real Sarajevo the one where people were happy, treated each other well, lived without conflict? Or is the real Sarajevo the one he sees today, where people are trying to kill each other, where bullets and bombs fly down from the hills and the buildings crumble to the ground?”

Steven Gallloway offers much to consider in an absolutely captivating story told in a sensitive manner with stunning prose. There are many layers of story and levels of meaning included in the book and this review only scratches the surface. Very highly recommended. ( )

In besieged Sarajevo, a cellist, gazing out his window, sees more than 20 people die from a bomb while waiting for bread. In mourning for them, he decided to play at that exact spot for 22 days, to honor all of the dead, putting his life at risk. Meanwhile, Kenan ventures out most days, embracing danger to get water for his family and inexplicably the neighbor, an old woman whom he has never liked. Dragan feels a burden on his family, his wife and son sent away before the war, and finds some comfort in his job at the bakery. Arrow, a sniper, is determined to wreak revenge on the people in the hills who are killing so many of her townspeople. Together, these characters weave a picture of a city under siege, somehow seeking hope but not yet hopeless.

My favorite character, to whom I wished the narrative would keep returning, was Arrow. She is the most interesting of all of them, a killer, but somehow one that we can love and empathize with even as she chooses her targets and plans her strategy. She’s a murderer who has blocked off her heart somehow, drawing a direct line between the girl she was and the sniper that she is now. I can’t imagine not feeling for her. The other characters were less compelling, especially Dragan, who seemed obsessed with a variety of things and complained too much. The cellist didn’t have much of a personality. Kenan was also a compelling character and I enjoyed the discoveries he made and the thoughts he had over the course of the novel.

Perhaps the only problem I had with it is that I liked it while I was reading it, but now that it’s been a while since I finished, its core meanings have not stayed with me particularly well. War is wrong and savage, and it’s lovely that the cellist brought hope into its midst, but I have read other books about Sarajevo and I’m not sure this stands out as much as perhaps it should. I enjoyed its ruminations on survival while people are out to kill you, how the city holds together as one being, and Arrow’s protection of the cellist, but I’m not left with a desire to reread this one, perhaps because I just never developed a deep relationship with the characters.

I am glad I read it and I would recommend The Cellist of Sarajevo, particularly if you enjoy bleak stories about war with a light shining through the darkness. ( )

It took me much too long to review this book, but not because I couldn't decide whether I liked it or not. I knew as soon as I started reading this compelling and unusually constructed narrative of the effects of the 1997 siege of Sarajevo on a quartet of the city's citizens that it was one of the finest books I've read in a long time.

No, the delay was because as soon as I finished it, I started loaning it out to people who I was pretty sure would love it, too. One of them, Amir, lived in Sarajevo when the siege began. He managed to escape through the tunnel mentioned in the book, and later married a good friend of mine and came to the U.S. I was happy that Amir gave the book a thumbs-up, and even happier that the book led to an absorbing discussion with him and his wife that gave me new insights into both that time and the current situation in Bosnia-Herzegovinia.

But enough about that. The narrative of "The Cellist of Sarajevo" is unusually constructed. There are four main characters, and the chapters alternate between their viewpoints. One of the characters is the titular cellist, who reacts to a bombing that killed 22 people waiting in a bread line by vowing to play on the bombing site every day for 22 days. Another character is "Arrow," a female sniper who is assigned to protect the cellist from assassination during his daily concerts. Kenan must make a dangerous trek across the city to fetch fresh water for his family, a journey that involves crossing intersections that are targeted by enemy snipers in the hills surrounding Sarajevo. Dragan is making a similar journey, trying to reach his workplace where he knows he can get a free meal — a precious commodity in a city where privation is the norm and no one has enough.

The four characters never meet each other, but they encounter other neighbors, friends, and strangers during the course of their quests. These encounters bring into sharp focus what it means to retain your essential humanity in the most inhumane of conditions, and whether it is possible to live through a war without losing the eseential essence of civilization.

"The Cellist of Sarajevo" is beautifully, lyrically written. I found myself compelled to read passages to myself, for the joy of hearing the language spoken aloud. Reading aloud also helped to slow my reading, and prolonged the pure pleasure of the experience of living with these four brave, fascinating individuals. ( )

It follows three stories - four, if you include the cellist's - of trying to survive and retain one's humanity while living in Sarajevo during the 1992-96 siege. The two men's stories (Keenan and Dragan) are particularly poignant and thought provoking: One man, a husband and a father, who is getting water for his family - a death defying act - and the other man who is trying to cross the city to get bread and have a meal. I've never lived in or through any situation even remotely like what is described, but reading this book makes these situations eerily real.

The writing is incredible - Mr. Galloway is a genius of just the right phrase without showing off. Reading this book reminds me of looking at a beautiful marble sculpture where just exactly just the right amount - no more, no less - has been chipped away. In this case, just the right number of words and the exact choices of words laid in a row in just the right order. Truly a work of art, while being very human and accessible at the same time. ( )

This is one of those novels that makes one uncomfortable. Here we see the effects of war on the common man -- the cellist who witnesses the deaths of 22 persons outside his home and determines to play the same piece at the same time for 22 days in observance of those deaths, the man on his way to get water, the man who wants to get some bread, and even the young female sniper who is determined to only kill soldiers. Your heart goes out to each of the persons as they must go through extraordinary circumstances to obtain a basic necessity of life. We see how the cellist's actions provide so much hope, if only for a moment, to those inhabiting the city under siege. A powerful account of a tragic part of Eastern European history. ( )