Book
Review
The
Cellist of Sarajevo
Author:
Steven Galloway
Publisher:
Atlantic Books, London, 2008
Pages:
227
War
is madness. It takes human civilisation
back to savagery. It dehumanises people
and makes of them cowards that hide themselves in holes like rats or ravenous beasts
that ferret out the quivering rats from their holes. It strips people of their dignity as human
beings. Food and water become scarce commodities. Famine and diseases replace the zest for
living. Friends become foes. Hatred spreads like a plague.
Steven
Galloway’s novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo,
explores the theme of war through the eyes of four persons: Dragan, Kenan,
Arrow and a cellist who is taken from the history of the civil war that rocked
Sarajevo in the first half of the 1990s.
The disintegration of the former USSR in 1991 led to a brutal civil war
that caused almost a quarter of a million deaths, the worst violence in Europe
since World War II.
“At
four o’clock in the afternoon on 27 May 1992, during the siege of Sarajevo,
several mortar shells stuck a group of people waiting to buy bread behind the
market on Vase Miskina,” says Galloway in the Afterword to the novel. “Twenty-two people were killed and at least
seventy were wounded. For the next
twenty-two days Vedran Smailovic, a renowned local cellist, played Albinoni’s
Adagio in G Minor at the site in honour of the dead.”
The
Cellist is a motif in the novel reminding us constantly of the struggle of
human civilisation against savagery, hope against despair, and stoic forbearance
against mindless depredation. Dragan and
Kenan are ordinary citizens who witness the war, suffer because of it in many
ways and eventually learn to become more human.
Arrow, a woman who has taken up that name symbolically, is a soldier who
can shoot very skilfully. She will kill
only the enemy soldiers and not the citizens among the opposite camps. She refuses to accept the argument of a
senior officer who orders her to kill the citizens too: “There are two sides to
this war, Arrow. Ours and theirs. There is no in-between.”
Is
there really no in-between? There has to
be, if humanity is to survive. Arrow is
not a mere killer; she is a soldier who is fighting not out of hatred of the
enemy but for love of her people. This is not an easy decision for Arrow. The temptation to hate is strong for any
soldier, for any human being. Anyone who
is not with us is against us: that’s the basic premise in any war. Hatred is not a specific feeling against
specific individuals anymore. Hatred is
now an abstract feeling against a whole community. War fills us with hatred.
“She
didn’t have to be filled with hatred,” Arrow realises. The music of the Cellist “demanded that she
remember this, that she know to a certainty that the world still held the
capacity for goodness.”
The
other two characters, Kenan and Dragan, too learn the lessons. The novel is about those lessons that we have
to learn if humanity is to survive if not flourish. “Because civilisation isn’t a thing that you
build and then there it is... It needs to be built constantly, recreated daily.”
Arrow
is a character from the real history of Sarajevo as is the Cellist. Galloway has woven a moving tale out of them
and the other two imagined characters.
The novel makes us sit up and reflect on the futility of war and
hatred. Why can’t we be more sensible
and create a happy world for all of us?
Why do we peddle in hatred so much when we can find much joy in living
harmoniously? Can’t we create a better
world for ourselves?
There
is no conventional plot in the novel.
Nor is it an experiment in any novel technique. It presents us a handful of characters and
their experiences as well as their self-understanding. It makes us think deeper about the human
situation and its potential for goodness.
Quite interesting! Today, I too shared an article on war but from different vantage point: Is war always evil? But, as I see, we are talking the same thing - the preservation of humanity and goodness. I'm definitely gonna read it. Thanks Matheikal.
ReplyDeleteWar is always evil. But it may be inevitable sometimes, like when we are attacked. "Preservation of humanity and goodness" may not necessitate wars at all. I'm more inclined to think that wars are engendered by malign forces.
DeleteTrue Sir. Agree with the novel's stress on the futility of War.
ReplyDeleteI shared a poem about the same for August 6th...
Just read your post on war and its disasters. Let's hope that more and more people begin to think like us.
DeleteFor more and more people to think like us, the word has to spread?. I find more and more younger ones are going the other uncaring ways. Is it not a fault of the generation , that failed to live by example? I am confused and also upset most of the time.
DeleteTo be honest sir, it is so painful to read about all this.. Sometimes I wonder how will the extinct of human kind be?? Are we going to kill each other or some natural disaster or some virus is going to swipe off our kind?? When there is already so much pain in the world why kill people in the name of war or terrorism???
ReplyDeleteThe way the world is going, I think we will kill one another. Man-made disasters of all sorts will bring the species to an end, it looks like.
DeleteYour review makes me want to order it right now. Perhaps I will...
ReplyDelete