The Bridge Over the Drina by Ivo Andric

The Bridge Over the Drina by Ivo Andric

In the Bosnian town of Visegrad, a stone bridge commissioned in the sixteenth century becomes the centre of three centuries of Balkan history.

Built under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the bridge at Visegrad at first unites a divided town. Generations gather on its arches: traders, soldiers, children, lovers, and gamblers, each leaving their mark as empires rise and fall.

As Ottoman rule gives way to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, daily life shifts under new laws, new loyalties and growing nationalist tensions. Through characters such as Radisav, who resists the bridge’s construction, and Fata, who leaps from its parapet rather than submit to marriage, The Bridge Over the Drina traces the intimate dramas that unfold against imperial control.

When the collision of forces in the Balkans ignites the First World War in 1914, the bridge that has endured centuries of occupation and upheaval finally faces destruction.

The Bridge Over the Drina reveals how ordinary lives are shaped, divided, and bound together by the pressures of empire.

In high school, one Saturday, I started reading a book by the Yugoslav novelist Ivo Andric: The Bridge on the DrinaBy the time I finished it something in me had shifted forever * New Statesman *
Despite its scale, what makes the book extraordinary is the tender insight with which it treats these individual lives, whether Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim or Jewish * Independent *
Perhaps the most widely translated Yugoslav book since the last war is Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina... No better example could have been selected with which to introduce the American public to contemporary Yugoslav prose * New York Times *
The best kind of fictionalised history * Daily Telegraph *
The 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 or Washington Irving's stories) ever possessed such a unity and continuity of theme * Le Monde *

Ivo Andric was born in 1982 in Travnik, Bosnia of Croat parents and grew up alongside Orthodox Christians, Muslims and Roman Catholics in Visegrad, the town on the banks of the Drina in which the book is set. Until 1941 he served a Yugoslav diplomat, then, placed under house arrest in Belgrade by the occupying Germans, Andric turned to writing. In 1961 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. he died in 1975.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781860460586
ISBN 10	1860460585
Title	The Bridge Over the Drina
Author	Ivo Andric
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Vintage Publishing
Year published	1994-04-05
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.