The Nobel Prize–winning author’s sweeping historical novel of Bosnia is “rich with humanity and the humor that comes with wisdom” (Library Journal).
Set in the town of Travnik, Bosnian Chronicle presents the struggle for supremacy in a region that stubbornly refuses to submit to any outsider. The era is Napoleonic and the novel, both in its historical scope and psychological subtlety, Tolstoyan. In its portrayal of conflict and fierce ethnic loyalties, the story is also eerily relevant to today’s world.
Ottoman viziers, French consuls, and Austrian plenipotentiaries are consumed by an endless game of diplomacy and double-dealing: expansive and courtly when meeting face-to-face, they are brooding and scheming behind closed doors. As they have for centuries, the Bosnians themselves observe and endure the machinations of greater powers that vie, futilely, to absorb them. Ivo Andric’s masterwork is imbued with the richness and complexity of a region that has endured so much tragedy in our century and known so little peace.
“The stories of very different kinds of men are found here, told with a philosophical detachment which lends Andric's work great authority.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Casts light on the dark path up which life so often throws us.” —TheNew York Times
