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Summary: Suffering and Longsuffering and life goes on...
Review: "generation after generation learnt not to mourn overmuch what the troubled waters had borne away...[life] was incessantly wasted and spent, yet none the less it lasted and endured 'like the bridge on the Drina'"This quote describes well the overall tone of this novel. If history can be described as a great river, the Bridge on the Drina tells the story of the riverbed. It takes a little while to "get into" but it is beautifully written. I highly reccommend it to anyone who wants to better understand Balkan nationalism and the wars of the early 90s, or to anyone who has an interest in Balkan history. I would suggest that you have a basic knowledge of the history of that time period though before reading it, otherwise you won't appreciate it as much.
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Summary: Amazing read...
Review: An amazing read and a masterful translation. I was captivated by the book and relished every page. Well worth your while...
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Summary: A history of occupation
Review: If you wish to capture the essence of the southern slavic ethos and historical trademark, read this book, embrace it, feel it. Ivo Andric masterfully collects pivotal traits of the Yugoslav people through centuries of occupation by Ottomans and Austrians. He grasps the crux of today's challenges in the Balkans: the scars by invaders and the thirst for national and even personal identity. I recommend every US government foreign services official and every NATO officer to read this book. I would also hope they'd understand it.
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Summary: It's Just a Bridge
Review: It should be possible to appreciate this book without acknowledging that Andric completely explains or understands the complex of racial, ethnic and historical factors converging on this famous bridge in Bosnia. Because the Ottoman Turks who built it didn't understand everything, either. The bridge remains an object of fascination, though, since it stands as a permanent refutation of the equally intransigent conviction of the current Serb and Bosnian popular mindset which holds that the Turks were stupid and destructive. The stories Andric weaves in and out of this geographic reference point are interesting, and some graphic. None more so (to my mind) than the torture scene atop the bridge involving a wooden stake and someone being punished. I won't wreck it for the reader by going any further. 20 years ago I spent part of an evening on this bridge with a Serb, who kept insisting that we play a game of trying to correlate each letter of the alphabet (the regular, non-cyrillic alphabet, thankfully) with the name of a famous river located anywhere in the Eurasian land mass. The penalty for missing a letter was to endure a shot of "shlievo." That's not an easy game to play. I had Andric's book with me at the time, but had not read much of it. Why read about it if you can stand on it?
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Summary: An excellent introduction to understanding Balkan society
Review: The bridge on the Drina continues to stand witness to political changes in the Balkans while the ethnic mosaic of the region remains more or less static. Andric has done a remarkable job of explaining the intracies of Balkan society through his story. Using the bridge as an eyewitness to 500 years of history, we see the rise and fall of empires as a community of Serbs, Croats, Jews, Christians and Moslems live, love and work side by side. Contrary to what the media would have us believe, the ethnic groups of the Balkans have not "hated one another for 500 years and will continue to do so." This book portrays Balkan life in a much more realistic manner than many newly published books on the subject have. If you are interested in the Balkans and are searching for a balanced view of what society was like before the current troubles, read this book. While it is fiction, the patterns of daily life, the social interactions and inter-ethnic relationships portrayed by Andric are right on the money. Little wonder this fabulous story was awarded the Pulitzer Prize when it first came out.
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Summary: Best Modern Slavic Novel
Review: After reading Don Quixote, it is said Freud wanted to learn spanish so that he could read that masterpeice without the bonds of translation. After reading this great book I wish to learn Serbo-Croat so that I could read this book in all its natural majesty. But I'm busy with college right now so it will just have to wait until I'm retired at 60 (I hope). The only problem I can find with the book is with the english translation. It doesn't "flow" as it should. As you read you might pick up on a few "ackward" sentences every page. But it is not Ivo's fault. Read this book...but if you have time, do yourself a favor and learn Serbo-Croat first.
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Summary: Not a masterpiece
Review: This is a serious, even compelling work of historical fiction, but it is not a masterpiece. It is far too episodic, and more importantly, does not fully bring to history the richness and passion and aesthetic power of literature. For example, the putative climax, the destruction of the bridge is extremely weak, even without purpose. There is an interesting parallel (perhaps not coincidental)between the beginning of The Bridge on the Drina and Kadare's The Three-Arched Bridge. It almost seems as if Kadare took elements of the first few chapters of Andric's book and transformed it into what is in fact a literary masterpiece of Balkan history; certainly deserving of the Nobel prize.
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Summary: An enchantingly written novel abundant with hate
Review: It's a sad state of affairs when a work of fiction (like the above mentioned book) is used and quoted as a historical fact. The people that look to this book as an explaination of the Bosnian problem are narrow minded to say the least. They remind me of those that quote the "Mein Kampf" to justify their bigotry. This book ought to remain what it is a work of fiction and nothing else.
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Summary: A book of hatred
Review: It is a very good novel, its literary value must be acknowledged. I think that people should read it to see intellectual roots of folks like Milosevic and Tudjman. One should keep in mind that it was people like Andric who saw the seeds of hatred among the peoples of Bosnia. The many Serbian readers say "if he lived until 1992/if he saw the war, he would be sorry." No, on the contrary, first he would be quite happy to see the jingoistic SANU memorandum and the one million people meeting of Slobo at Kosovo Polje. He would, in fact, have loved it, since it signalled the beginning of the tragedy of Yugoslav Muslims whom he loathed so much. If we, the Serbs, refuse to accept the fact that what happened in Bosnia, and sadly in Kosovo, was our mistake, then expect the repetition of it, say, in Sumadija, Vojvodina, Crna Gora, etc.. Because of our primitive nationalism, inspired by people like Andric, Serbian and other people continue to pay heavy prices. We must stop blaming the Turks for all of our problems. It is a shame that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for hating the "Turks", i.e. all Muslims living in the Balkans, as Serbian and Croat fascists like to call them. (I know that it is strange to write these in Valjevo.)
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Summary: take a moment to think
Review: I'm a yugoslav girl, we live in Holland. I was 5 yrs old when the war started, and I never understood why, I didn't even know that there were Croats, muslims, and Serbs. To me we are all YUGOSLAV. That's why I love this book so much, it doesn't judge people just because of their ethnicity. We must all stop doing that, in a history, far far ago, we were ONE NATION, when we came here from behind the Carpats. And Ivo Andric is not a Bosnian Serb nor a Bosnian Croat, he's YUGOSLAV! The four reasons why the Balkan is so f**ked up are: 1)The Byzantium Empire, they made the Serbians orthodox 2)The Ottomans, they threw in the Islam 3) Austria-Hungary, they made the Croats catholic 4) The Slavic stubborness! If Andric was alive now, he would be ashamed because of us. We do not deserve his book if we cannot use it to bring lasting peace. The war, it broke my heart, as I still have a niece in Croatia who I never even met, because my uncle was kicked out because he's a Serb. Now he's a drunk, my parents are frustrated ever since the war and my life is hell. I just want the old Yugoslavia back, with it's tourism, music (Merlin, Oliver, Neda Ukraden and Crvena Jabuka) and no more judging! Like the people in Visegrad lived in peace with eachother, even though terrible things happened when the Ottomans and Habsburgs were there, why couldn't we just do that? It's up to us....
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