The National Library

Sources:
http://books.google.com/books?id=FAdxZ6F2uEAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=bosnian+genocide&source=bl&ots=UyYfQF45bG&sig=GLmNESZPS_aHzGdbif5XLwjh_Us&hl=en&ei=uN3oS9jqKITgsQO8_sD2Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=bosnian%20genocide&f=false
http://kihm2.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/library-sarajevo.jpg

Upon searching for the term "Bosnian Genocide," I was intrigued and surprised to find that a huge number of the items were about the National Library. I looked further to find this quotation from a newspaper article with an interview with Sarajevans: "The attack lasted less than half an hour. The fire lasted into the next day. The sun was obscured by the smoke of books, and all over the city sheets of burned paper, fragile pages of grey ashe, floated down like a dirty black snow. Catching a page you could feel its heat, and for a moment read a fragment of text in a strange kind of black and grey negative, until, as the heat dissipated, the page melted to dust in your hand." It seems as though all the pages, all the knowledge of an entire civilization are flying away in little strips that melt in your hand. This, to me, is the ultimate example of genocide, and attempt to destroy a culture: in one fell swoop, completely obliterating the books of a city. Upon further inspection, I found that over one million books were burned in that attack. The number speaks for itself. I also found out that, before shelling the Library, the men on the hills shelled the nearby fire brigade and shut off the water to the area so that there was absolutely no way to stop the burning. It is then no wonder that Galloway describes this moment as one of the most tragic scenes of the genocide.

An Interview with Galloway

In an interview, Steven Galloway stated that he chose Sarajevo because he wanted to write about how war affected people for whom war was not their business. Galloway wanted to write about regular everyday citizens who were not soldiers, politicians, or journalists. Galloway chose to base his story in Sarajevo and not an imagined city because he wanted to convey the concrete quality of events like the Siege of Sarajevo as well as the aftereffects and the role of art in society. He wanted to make the ideas in the book seem more real and not suppositional. By choosing a fairly recent event, Galloway could avoid the comment that “times were different then.” Interestingly, Galloway stated that he chose to have three separate main characters to mirror the structure of Albinoni’s adagio. The adagio was built off of a trio sonata, which has three distinct voices working separately, but together the three voices make up a bigger whole. Galloway intended for the three characters to mirror the structure of the trio sonata, and at the same time, the characters voiced one of the three main concerns during the Siege of Sarajevo: food, water, and staying alive.

Vedran Smailovic, the real Cellist of Sarajevo

Though Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo is about the fictional lives of four characters during the Siege of Sarajevo, the unnamed Cellist in the novel is based of Vedran Smailovic, a cellist who played in the streets of Sarajevo for the duration of the two-year siege. Smailovic’s dedication to music during such time of hardship has inspired musicians such as David Bowie, U2, Pavarotti and Sir Paul McCartney and all of them have asked to perform with him. Yet he does not welcome the fame. He wants peace after two years of warfare.
When The Cellist of Sarajevo came out, Smailovic was “so angry that he is threatening to stage another protest and burn his famous cello in the spot where he played Albinoni’s Adagio during those 22 days of mourning and protest in 1992.” To Smailovic, the book stole his identity. “I am still in shock. I am not naïve. I am not interested in his bloody fiction, I am interested in reality. They are using my picture and advertising their product with my name… I never blessed this project.”
In the author’s note Galloway says that Smailovic’s actions “inspired this novel, but I have not based the character of the cellist on the real Smailovic.” “I don’t use his name, I call my character the Cellist and he’s really only a character in the first five pages. It’s not really about him; it’s about the other characters and their reactions to what he does.” So far from what we read in The Cellist of Sarajevo, we have not seen much of a character from the Cellist except from the first four pages, but when Arrow is sent to guard him, he seems more as a symbol against the siege rather than a person against it.
Still, Smailovic feels misrepresented. He claims, “I didn’t play for twenty two days, I played all my life in Sarajevo and for the two years of the siege each and every day. “They keep saying I played at four in the afternoon, but the explosion was at ten in the morning and I am not stupid, I wasn’t looking to get shot by snipers so I varied my routine.” “I never stopped playing music throughout the siege. My weapon was my cello. But if I do not get justice now, I will burn it back in Sarajevo.” Though Galloway never contacted Smailovic before or during the novel’s process, do you think Galloway was wrong to write a book based of this legendary man and how he impacted the lives around him in a fictional way?



http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4083037.ece