Books

Unusual for a book about war, The Cellist of Sarajevo manages to convey a sense of hope for humanity. Inspired by the true story of a cellist who daily risked his life to play his music in a street where 22 died waiting to buy bread, Steven Galloway's fine novel takes readers inside the horrors of the siege of Sarajevo.

Mr. Galloway tells the story of the city's suffering from the viewpoints of three people who have lived there in good times and bad. It's physically a small book with small tensions surrounding a big subject.

The first narrator, called Arrow, is a slight woman of 28, with bright blue eyes. Her late father was a policeman. Arrow has volunteered as a sniper, to kill the soldiers on the hills around the city, also snipers, before they can kill others. Before the war, she represented her university in marksmanship contests. Now her highest and best calling is as the protector of the cellist while he performs.

The second narrator, Kenan, 39, is married with children. Formerly employed as the clerical assistant to an accountant, he now finds much of his time is spent making the long, dangerous trek through town to get drinking water from springs at a distant brewery. It's a necessary service he provides not only for his immediate family, but also for an ungrateful elderly neighbor.

Dragan, a 64-year-old bakery worker, sent his wife and 19-year-old son to safety in Italy, but remains in Sarajevo out of a sense of duty to the city, and because he thinks the war will one day end.

Told from alternating points of view, this spare but rich novel highlights the boundaries that each character will not cross. Yes, Arrow will kill people she does not know, but she will not kill just anyone. Yes, Kenan may get tired of his old, cranky neighbor, but he will not leave her without water, even if he might like to. And Dragan may fantasize about leaving Sarajevo, but what is most important to him is that he preserve some sense of civilization even in the midst of violence.

The privations of war, and the way that horrific scenes transpose themselves onto places that once were beautiful and calm, come through brilliantly in this quietly eloquent novel.

Mr. Galloway has written a powerful anti-war novel. He admits that he has taken liberties with the sequence of events surrounding Sarajevo, compressing time to allow heightened tension. The resulting story is one that is powerfully true, if not strictly factual.

What touches the reader most is the way individuals slowly and quietly come to see how important it is not to lose their soul. Mr. Galloway points out that in the future, the world may well forget the horrors of Sarajevo. Dragan notes after one attack: "The sniper will fire again, though, if not here then somewhere else, and if not him, then someone else, and it will all happen again, like a herd of gazelle going back to the water hole after one of their own is eaten there."

Anne Morris, a member of the National Book Critics Circle, lives in Austin.

Steven Galloway

(Riverhead Books, $21.95)

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