The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction)

Ivo Andric's stately architectonic prose spans the five-century history of Visegrad, in Bosnia, as imperturbably as the Ottoman stone bridge that centered the economic, political, and social life of the town. The bridge, as told with thorough historicity, was built as a 'gift' to the region by Mohammed Söküllü, a janissary taken from a Serbian peasant family who rose by natural ability to become the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire in the mid 16th Century. Life in Visegrad, with its uneasy blend of Muslims, Christians and Jews, flows under the bridge as steadily as time, now a turbid torrent now a turgid trickle but like Time itself always toward the sea of forgetfulness. Incidents of passion, violence, cruelty, and comedy occur and recur on the 'kapia' - the broad center of the bridge - leaving their imprint in folk songs and lurking fears. Andric writes: ""So, on the kapia, between the skies, the river and the hills, generation after generation learnt not to mourn overmuch what the troubled waters had borne away. They entered there into the unconscious philosophy of the town; that life was an incomprehensible marvel, since it was incessantly wasted and spent, yet none the less it endured 'like the bridge on the Drina'.""That enduring phlegmatic balance, that provincial tranquillity, would last even through the decadence of Ottoman authority and the incorporation of Bosnia into another multi-cultural empire - Austria-Hungary - but it would meet its destruction with the intrusion of modernity, nationalism, and World War 1. The bridge itself would be mined and demolished in the War. Though Ivo Andric depicts the exploitation and tyranny of the Ottomans, then the crass invasive bureaucracy of the Austrians, with caustic realism, it's plain that he pines for the old days and old ways, that his vision of history is utterly conservative and nostalgic.What's remarkably fine about this measured history is Andric's ability to share insights into the mentalities of all parties, Muslims and Jews as respectfully as Christian, rich and poor, successes and failures, those who adapt and those who don't. Like the bridge that resounds to the footsteps of all with equanimity and carries all traffic licit or illicit impartially, Andric depicts the virtuous and the wicked with open affection for their humanity. A barely-fictionalized biography of a stone bridge, 314 pages of small print, might sound like a challenge to any reader's attention span, but Andric makes it both emotionally affecting and historically enlightening. No other book, I think, can evoke the distinct realities of Balkan history, or elucidate the psychology of the post-Yugoslav calamities as vividly as this one.For once, I urge readers not to skip the introduction by William McNeill, which outlines Bosnian history with helpful brevity. I wonder also at the authority of this translation by Lovett Edwards. It reads gracefully enough in English, but there are loopholes in it, as noted by some earlier reviewers. The biggest loophole is the identification of the Muslims of Visegrad as "Turks". Ethnic Turks they certainly were not. Rather they were the descendants of Slavic converts to Islam, chiefly from among the heretic Bogomil Christians. Since I can't read Serbo-Croatian, I'm uncertain whether Andric intended us to accept that the converts identified themselves as Turks or whether the translator simply brushed the issue aside. It is an important distinction, made important by the violence of ethnic and religious "cleansing" in the Bosnia of the 21st Century.Chiefly it's the author's love of the place and the people - stone and water, permanence and transience - that make "The Bridge on the Drina" a beautiful reading experience.

From the first page to the very end, its mastery, beauty and the depth of thoughts never wanes. This is an incredible, exceptional literature with so much history of the people of Visegrad from the time of the building of the bridge in the 16th Century till 1914, the war, and their humanity constantly violated by bigger forces. It is written (I am assuming because the translation is so beautiful) poetically, almost with subtle rhythm, deeply moving... lamentation over the destruction of people's love, life, faith, their songs... their existence. The bridge, the bearer of all the songs and stories of the people, their legends, over shared plum brandy, the bearer of the violence, executions and suicides, the bearer of broken hearts and weeping parents and martyrs and numerous victims...."But the bridge still stood, the same as it had always been, with the eternal youth of a perfect conception, one of the great and good works of man, which do not know what it means to change and grow old and which, or so it seemed, do not share the fate of the transient things of this world""the kapia was there where it had always been, but just beyond the kapia the bridge stopped short. there was no longer any seventh pier; between the sixth and the eight yawned a gulf through which he could see the green waters of the river. From the eighth pier onward the bridge once more stretched to the farther bank, smooth and regular and white, as it had been yesterday and always"

This is a very good book. Indeed, the author won the Nobel prize in literature. He (Ivo Andric) only beat J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert Frost, John Steinbeck and E. M. Forster (from Wikipedia) to win the prize. I read this book on the way over to Croatia some number of years ago. I learned at lot

Nobel prize for literature, it’s a great insight in Serbian history

Epic saga of a Balkan river town, which receives a strong and beautiful bridge at the height of Ottoman power in the 1500s. The novel follows the town and bridge for almost four centuries.Humans live at two levels, both as individuals and also as part of a local society, like the difference between an ant and an anthill. Almost all novels focus on the individual, like taking snapshots with a camera. But this novel surveys the local society for 15 generations, like a high-flying camera drone. (Some novelists, for example Booth Tarkington, write 3-generation family sagas which connect the two levels.)Looking down from a high altitude at the 20th century, the novelist shows the confusion brought by a mis-educated young generation, who are the product of wealth and travel:"Life stood before them as an object, as a field of action for their liberated senses, for their intellectual curiosity and their sentimental exploits, which knew no limits. All roads were open to them, onward to infinity; on most of those roads they would never even set foot, but none the less the intoxicating lust for life lay in the fact that they could (in theory at least) be free to choose which they would and dare to cross from one to the other. All that other men, other races, in other times and lands, had achieved and attained in the course of generations, through centuries of effort, at the cost of lives, of renunciations and of sacrifices greater and dearer than life, now lay before them as a chance inheritance and a dangerous gift of fate. It seemed fantastic and improbable but was none the less true: they could do with their youth what they liked, and give their judgments freely and without restriction; they dared to say what they liked and for many of them those words were the same as deeds, satisfying their atavistic need for heroism and glory, violence and destruction, yet they did not entail any obligation to act nor any visible responsibility for what had been said."

Originalmente conseguí este libro en Bosnia pero lo perdí en el aeropuerto y lo volví a pedir por Amazon y resultó que esta versión tiene una introducción mucho mejor que el primero que tuve así es que muy recomendado :) buen libro!

It is written in such an eloquent way, it feels like I'm living it through. Especially first quarter of the book, it is truly heart wrenching! Highly recommended.

I got the book as a gift for my dad and he really enjoys reading it

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Perfect for quite days of winter holiday