The Cellist of Sarajevo – Steven Galloway

The BBBC lives! Further posts will follow...

Venue: The Hop Pole, Upper Bristol Road

Date: June 30th 2011

Book: The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway.

Ras’s choice of book promised (on the cover) that ‘…when the everyday act of crossing the street can risk lives, the human spirit is revealed in all its fortitude – and frailty.’ The book created fictional accounts from four of the besieged of Sarajevo, using as a uniting hook the true story of Vedran Smailović, the cellist who in summer 1992 played Albinoni’s Adagio in the street in full view of snipers, every day for 22 days – one day for every fatality in a mortar attack on the market outside the ruins of which he set up his stool.

The cellist isn’t mentioned by name in the book and accounts for a small part of the narrative. When the book came out, a story went around that Smailović was upset that his actions had been appropriated and the truth changed to fit the storyteller’s needs. He’s quoted as saying at the time:

“I didn’t play for 22 days, I played all my life in Sarajevo and for the two years of the siege each and every day. They keep saying I played at four in the afternoon, but the explosion was at ten in the morning and I am not stupid, I wasn’t looking to get shot by snipers so I varied my routine. I never stopped playing music throughout the siege. My weapon was my cello.”

Fair to say we had mixed responses to the book. On one hand was the view that, as Ras said, it was a vivid portrayal of ‘total war’ as it affects those who have little control over their destinies. The characters were strong and believable, one was drawn into and interested in/appalled by their stories and experiences. And while the general feel was similar to the ‘City of Thieves’, about the siege of St Petersburg, there was a strong feeling that this was a vivid insight into European events of the relatively recent past about which many of us felt sadly uninformed. On that level I think there was general agreement that the book met with some success as a narrative, with the simplest sections – such as Kenan's journey to collect water from the brewery – providing the greatest impact.

There was less agreement about the way the book dealt with the wider context of events. The focus was entirely on the besieged. Who were the ‘men in the hills’ who wreaked havoc so indiscriminately on soldiers and innocent civilians alike? What was their motivation, why were they so bent on the total destruction of the city and its people? What were the seeds of the conflict; how far did religious and cultural divides contribute? Mark Th was unhappy about the book in general – the main characters were thinly drawn and went about their actions in a dreamlike state which told us nothing about the causes and factions, while focusing only on the ‘right here, right now’ action on the streets. This lack of balance didn’t work for him. Richard also described it as ‘a good little book’ with the emphasis on the word ‘little’ (as in both ‘short’ and ‘not great’). Ultimately disappointing, as with that palette of material surely something much more enlightening could have been created. We did acknowledge that it would have been a lot more than 220 pages long, however. And Rob makes the point that if the author didn’t set out to write a detailed historical account, which he obviously didn’t, there’s little point in criticising him as if he had. I think.

But for others, notably Rob, Chris, Neil and Mark T, it was an engaging, easily read and thought-provoking book that did exactly what it set out to do. The cunning inclusion of a female counter-sniper character worked very well for some…

There were some comments around the style of the writing: I personally found the introductory chapter about the cellist over-written and overly-dramatic, and subsequent long sections written in the present tense (especially Arrow’s chapters) failed to keep the suspense taut, as the writer apparently intended.

In summary, we acknowledged the book’s brevity, drama and ability to bring to our attention a segment of recent European history that some of us hadn’t been fully aware of. But some criticised the end result, in which only one side of the canvas had been painted in.

We gave it 6.025 out of 10.