The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction Series)
The Bridge on the Drina is a vivid depiction of the suffering history has imposed upon the people of Bosnia from the late 16th century to the beginning of World War I. As we seek to make sense of the current nightmare in this region, this remarkable, timely book serves as a reliable guide to its people and history.
“No better introduction to the study of Balkan and Ottoman history exists, nor do I know of any work of fiction that more persuasively introduces the reader to a civilization other than our own. It is an intellectual and emotional adventure to encounter the Ottoman world through Andric’s pages in its grandiose beginning and at its tottering finale. It is, in short, a marvelous work, a masterpiece, and very much sui generis. . . . Andric’s sensitive portrait of social change in distant Bosnia has revelatory force.”—William H. McNeill, from the introduction
“The dreadful events occurring in Sarajevo over the past several months turn my mind to a remarkable historical novel from the land we used to call Yugoslavia, Ivo Andric’s The Bridge on the Drina.”—John M. Mohan, Des Moines Sunday Register
Born in Bosnia, Ivo Andric (1892-1975) was a distinguished diplomat and novelist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961. His books include The Damned Yard: And Other Stories, and The Days of the Consuls.
Customer Review: The definition of Epic Masterpiece
The masterpiece that won the author a Noble prize for fiction. If he was Russian, his name would follow in the same breath as Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, and he’d barely need introducing. But the literary landscape doesn’t always offer the same kind of literary stage to all its masters. Some of them are almost buried in the wreckage of European history. At the epicentre of the Continent’s eruptions, Andric set out an epic (this word so often overstated, here is an understatement), on the crossroads between divisive Christianity and relentless Islam, modern Imperial powers and those that began to dissolve after hundreds of years of desperate control. Written in Belgrade, during the worst of the Nazi bombing, demolishing the city as the author wrote, Andric looks back across the histories that have been written across his home-land. A substantial book that does not drag with weighty history or become mired in tearful sentimentality; does not proclaim battle inspiring philosophies or declaim political war cries. Andric finds his focus on an elegant bridge spanning a coursing river, and is mesmerized by the confluence of human destinies passing over it. His genius lies in his perception of unique human character and the ability to reveal it in all its complexity with the clear light of god-like wisdom. Third person narrative brought to its ultimate resolution, and the epic novel to its most complete expression. It deserves to be read, and perhaps, celebrated.
Angle of Repose (Contemporary American Fiction) Wallace Stegner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery–personal, historical, and geographical. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents’ remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America’s western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he’s willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.
