The Cellist of Sarajevo

I am extremely taken with this book by Steven Galloway, set in 1992 Sarajevo while the city was under siege. The story finds it's central theme from the true events in Sarajevo after 22 people were killed in the city streets from mortar fire while they were in a bread line. Overwhelmed with sorrow and hopelessness because of the senseless deaths, a cellist from the Sarajevo orchestra puts on his tux and sits in the hole left in the street from the ghastly attack and vows to play his cello there for 22 days in honor of each of the victims.

Beautifully written, this short book follows the lives of 4 different characters as they discover how to stay human despite the horror and hate that surrounds them. It is a timeless book, that could be set in any war torn city during any period of history. The themes of hope, humanity, hate, fear and death are beautifully woven together and create an amazing story that will definitely stay with you long after you have put the book down.

This is a book I promise you will enjoy, no matter your age or literary preference. My husband doesn't read much fiction but after he read the first chapter I had to fight him to get a chance to read it.

Read an excerpt below:

It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort. A target expanded in size, brought into focus by time and velocity. There was a moment before impact that was the last instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded.

In 1945, an Italian musicologist found four bars of a sonata's bass line in the remnants of the firebombed Dresden Music Library. He believed these notes were the work of the seventeenth-century Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni, and spent the next twelve years reconstructing a larger piece from the charred manuscript fragment. The resulting composition, known as Albinoni's Adagio, bears little resemblance to most of Albinoni's work and is considered fraudulent by most scholars. But even those who doubt its authenticity have difficulty denying the Adagio's beauty.

Nearly half a century later, it's this contradiction that appeals to the cellist. That something could be almost erased from existence in the landscape of a ruined city, and then rebuilt until it is new and worthwhile, gives him hope. A hope that, now, is one of a limited number of things remaining for the besieged citizens of Sarajevo and that, for many, dwindles each day. Read Full Chapter