Typical of the region, the novel takes a long, long time before the action starts. Only after 300 pages does the main narrative begin. The first 300 pages are filled with vignettes and preludes that only acquire meaning after the completion of the book. Everything is connected and just this closeness of different attitudes, peoples and cultures results in an inordinate amount of brutality and suffering in an otherwise backward location. Progress, technology and war comes to Visegrad from far away countries whose representatives change, dig and smash, while life goes on for the population.

In its last 100 pages,a poignant anti-war novel emerges. a fitting companion to All Quiet on the Western Front where the war, destruction and turmoil is all about civilians caught in situations beyond their control and understanding. ( )

This is the tale of a bridge, and much more. It is the story of a small town on the Bosnian border; its life under the Ottomans and later, the Austrians; the joys, the hardships, the pains of the people of the town of Visegrad whose fates depended on the whims and decrees imposed by the far-off capital city of whoever was the imperial ruler then; the reverberations of revolts and wars that were being fought across the border or further inland; and a bridge who was witness to it all.

Spanning a canvas of more than 300 years, Andrić brings to life in the most beautiful and vivid way, rural and town life in Visegrad which was first just a little sleepy border place along the river Drina made up of Turks, Jews, and Serbs who, though they harbored deep suspicion of each other, have learned how to live, and even like each other, albeit depended on each other for their mutual survival.

First, there was no bridge. Then sometime in the 16th century, the great Mehmet Pasha, whose origins were from that region, instructed the construction of a great bridge. And life started to revolve around that bridge. As well as death, for along the centuries, it became the symbol and the stage where the power, repression and aggression of the ruling power were displayed in the most savage form both as reminder and punishment.

Andrić writes a fictional but truthful history of the bridge at Visegrad. We meet a host of memorable characters and experience unforgettable events. There are the peasants, the townsmen, the merchants, the priests; then came the workers, the builders of the bridge; then the soldiers and new settlers from far-off lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who administered the town's transformation in the “Western” way; then there were the intellectuals, the students, and the revolutionaries. Between these waves which took place over many generations, we feel as if the town is always at the edge of something that is not within them to control. Change came, most of the time not subtly and not from any internal source, and here we see how tensions developed, grew, and sometimes, exploded. And those who could not accept change simply faded away for there was no room for these misfits in the new social order. This is just a small part of a much bigger story, but we begin to have a glimpse of some of the historical sources of the volatility of a region located at the crossroads of East and West, and which served as a pawn by much greater powers in their games of political domination. Through all these waves and changes, there stood the bridge - the only constant, permanent thing in their lives. It was solid, it was immense, it was indestructible. But was it really?

This book is a truly a masterpiece. I was swept away by the writing from the very first page, and didn't want the tale to end. But it had to end, and it was not a very happy ending, even as we know that until now what is there is a fragile peace, and deep scarring from a bloody recent past. ( )

A very graphic novel at parts. Sometimes a little hard to read. The story is of a bridge over 400 years of Turkish occupation. ( )

One of the best books I have read this year. Imagine if you left a TV camera pointed at a bridge for over half a millenium. Now imagine that the bridge is an almost permanent frontier between warring parties, be it Muslim and Christian, Ottoman and Serb, Serb and Austro-Hungarian. Andric's book attempts (and succeeds) to tell 500 years of European history via the characters who inhabit one small town in Bosnia that teeters on the brink of two empires. The book follows the 'life' of the bridge, beginning with its construction by an Ottoman vezir and ending with its destruction during World War I . Although Andric's book is about 'big' history, his characters are the 'little' people, watching and being swept up by world events. The characters change as time passes, but are engaging, comic and believable, reminding me of Salman Rushdie's fluid prose and casts of grotesques. The story as a whole is not a million miles from being a sort of European 'Midnight's Children', except that the central character is not a person, or a nation, but a bridge. Perhaps a primer in Balkan history is handy to get the full import of all the events the befall the bridge, but, that aside, this is the very definition of accessible, engaging writing.

Unbeknownst to my slavic university professor, this novel is so well-written and so historical in its content, that I lied about finishing it in order to savour the completion of reading it. Indeed, Mr. Andric deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature. ( )