Bosnian Chronicle

Description

For as long as anyone can remember, the little cafe known as 'Lutvo's' has stood at the far end of the Travnik bazaar. In the remote town of Travnik, the newly appointed French consul soon finds himself intriguing against his Austrian rival, whilst dealing with a colourful cast of Bosnian notables, Orthodox priests, Jewish merchanges and Muslim farmers.

Ivan 'Ivo' Andric (1892-1975) is the author of THE BRIDGE ON THE DRINA and other works. He was born to a Croat family in a small Bosnian town near Travnik in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Celia Hawkesworth is a renowned academic and translator of Serbo-Croat literature.

he wealth and variety of its fictional elements carry it so far beyond the confines of a straightforward novel, it cannot be limited to such a description. It puts one in mind of a collection of tales, but no collection of tales (not even A Thousand and One Nights) ever possessed such a unity and continuity of theme -- George Perec In a novel with the range and sweep of BOSNIAN CHRONICLE, the main conflict is between the large forces of history, religion and ideology of east and west. Their passing embodiment in lives vividly portrayed gives history a hundred telling faces and voices -- Michael Schmidt Cultures and nationalities, East and West, merge and clash in a reading experience like no other. This exhilarating book of a lifetime was completed in 1945 and it won the 1961 Nobel Prize for Andric... It leaps off the page through the characters and their exchanges with each other' * Irish Times *