Friday, April 3, 2009

Review of The Cellist of Sarajevo


The Cellist of Sarajevo
by Steven Galloway
Adult Fiction
Available now in paperback

The Siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege in recorded history, lasting from 1992 to 1996. For four year, snipers lived in the hills ringing the city and made it almost impossible to navigate the streets safely. This is the tale of four people trapped in Sarajevo. A cellist decides to play at the site of a mortar attack for 22 days. A baker and a young father try to survive, braving the streets for food and water. And a young girl becomes a countersniper tasked with a very difficult objective. The narrative moves from one character to the next, but at the center is Sarajevo: a broken, burned, and bombed-out city that has little left to offer its citizens. This novel is a painful but clear-eyed account of the choices that men and women make when it seems that there are no options left.

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