Bosnian Chronicle: A Novel

I disliked this book and so did most members of my book group. The author had the ability to write well but not how to write a novel. One book group member said she felt "imprisoned" by the commitment to finish the book and "liberated" when it was over. So did I. It's not about Bosnia, it's written from Europeans' supercilious viewpoint . Basically pointless. Maybe it had some relevance in the 50s-60s, but I learned essentially nothing by reading it in 2020.

Ivo Andric's Bosnian Chronicle is a splendid book in a marvelous translation. I was compelled however on the very first page to refer to Google maps to answer the question, where the hell is Travnik, Bosnia? Andric provides an engrossing and compelling description of the lives of multiple individuals, ethnic and religious groups under Ottoman rule. The time frame includes the seven year period in Europe when Napoleon Bonaparte's power surged, crested and broke.

A history of the Balkans makes fascinating reading because of Andric's strength as a novelist.

I visited this area a long time ago. Having a lot of experience with Europe and the Middle East the book makes a lot of sense, specially from a historical point of view. It explains realistically the interplay between France (Napoleon) the Austrian and Turkish Empires, Bosnia and Serbia. I wish I had read it before I visited back in the 60s.

The translation is superb, and the production values are very high. The next book that I plan to read is The Woman from Sarajevo, by the same author (Ivo Andric) and translator (Joseph Hitrec).

If you haven't read Andric, I wouldn't start here. Maybe "The Bridge on the Drina" or "The woman from Sarajevo". Andric is great at giving you great insight to this part of the world.

This was not what I expected, which was an account of the ethnic and religious struggles in this most sad region. Rather, the vantage point is through through the character of Daville, French envoy to a Bosnian town during the time of Napoleon.

Long and slow read, but excellent portrayal of a region torn between religions and cultures and the impacts these have on the people living there. Helps understanding of more contemporary events in Bosnia.

The setting is Travnik, the capital from 1699 to 1850 of the Ottoman province of Bosnia. The year is 1806, and Napoleon, who has acquired the nearby coast of Dalmatia in the previous year, is sending Jean Daville, a protégé of Napoleon’s foreign minister, Talleyrand, as a consul to represent him in Travnik. The people there – native notables, merchants and the poor alike, all of them conservative and proud – rudely show their resentment – sometimes even in the form of riots - of all outsiders in in their midst, including of the Vizier and the Ottoman officials. The local Vizier, Husref Mehmed Pasha (a real historical person) receives the consul cordially. Daville watches in horror some of treacherous and deadly manoeuvres in Travnik that follow the overthrow in Constantinople of the reformist Sultan Selim III in 1807.The book is saturated with Daville’s misery, especially when France was at war; and it is astonishing that he did not resign: he hated and did not understand the country – unlike his much younger and resented assistant, Des Fossés, who was curious about it and did come to understand it, for example why the Bosnians actually did not want good roads. Des Fossés had learnt and then narrated to the bored consul the layers of history of the place and the stories of many of the people living there. He also has long philosophical conversations with one of the local doctors and with one of the local friars.Ever since the Ottomans had been driven out of some of the Christian lands, tensions had arisen between the Muslims on the one hand and Catholic and Orthodox Christians on the other; and these Christians are the only ones who hope that the consul will help them. When the Austrians sent Colonel von Mitterer as their Consul to Travnik, the Catholics were even more welcoming, because they regarded the Napoleon’s government as essentially godless. (Anna Maria, von Mitterer’s neurotic and frenetic wife, is, embarrassingly, a fervent admirer of Napoleon.)The Muslims, on the other hand, were even more opposed to the Austrians than they were to the French, because Austria was so much nearer to Bosnia than was France.The two consuls did everything to thwart and undermine each other, though they had in much common: their isolation in this backward and barbarous place to which they felt exiled, the discomforts they felt in the cold and wet autumn, and their difficulties with their own governments and with the Turks. During the rare moments when the relations between France and Austria temporarily improved, they could indulge in such fellow-feeling.In 1808 the urbane Husref Mehmed was replaced by the dour Ibrahim Halimi Pasha, who brought with him a large entourage of officials who, like the Vizier, are almost caricatures and are all described in great detail. These officials do not seem to have much of a connection with the novel’s main plot: Andrić is often very discursive (but very readable) in describing life in Bosnia. He devotes, for example, most of a long chapter to Travnik’s four doctors and their different approaches to medicine and to sickness; there are accounts of various incongruous infatuations; or he records the ineffectual chatter of three local drunks.The new Vizier appalled the French and Austrian consuls when he displayed to them the hacked-off noses and ears of defeated Serbian rebels. (The Serbian revolt against the Turks had begun in 1804 and would not end until 1813). Then Daville was shattered to find that a pro-French commander of troops against the Serbs was brought down by Austrian intrigues, and executed. Daville was quite unable to save him. Later, there are terrible scenes of mob violence leading to cruel and prolonged public executions of Serbs who were resident in Bosnia.Ibrahim Pasha had at one time been Selim III’s Grand Vizier, and the new Sultan, Mustafa IV, had demoted him to Travnik. Daville established some kind of friendship with the new vizier: they shared a pessimistic view of the world, and they both despised the Bosnians), and Ibrahim gave Daville the details of the brutal murder of Selim III.Des Fossés was posted elsewhere in 1809 and von Mitterer in 1811, the latter replaced by Lt.-Col. von Paulich. Though relations between France and Austria were good at the time, von Paulich was polite, but in an icy and unapproachable way. However, those peaceful years between 1809 and 1812 brought some relief to Daville.But then the invasion of Russia and the French defeat there brought back all his depression. The Vizier Ibrahim Pasha, with whom Daville had established warm personal relations, was recalled in 1813 and replaced by Siliktar Ali Pasha, autocratic, savage, and unpredictable, unleashing terror, arresting and in many cases executing prominent locals who had been insufficiently devoted to the Ottomans, and former officials for not having been strict enough. Leading Christians and Jews were imprisoned and released only after large ransomes had been paid. Then he set off against the Serb rebels, and, unlike his predecessors, returned victorious, having crushed this first Serbian revolt. Later that year, Austria once again declared war on the weakened France, and the the two consuls had again to work against each other. The previous viziers had always given more regard to the French than to the Austrian consul – now it was the other way round.Then came to news of Napoleon’s abdication and the restoration of the Bourbons. Daville pledged allegiance to the new government (to which Talleyrand had also transferred his allegiance), but he asked to be relieved of his post and suggested that the consulate in Travnik be closed, as the French would no longer need to maintain a presence there. And the Austrian consul gave similar advice to his own government, as there would no longer be a need to counteract the French.This is an immensely rich and scholarly novel, the microcosm of local history and incident played out against the macrocosm of the great events in Europe. There are many philosophical reflections – about the impermanences in history, about the attitudes of the western and eastern people towards each other, about incipient nationalism in the Balkans, about brutal violence, about religious attitudes and tensions, and about the precarious position of the Jews (the novel was written during the Second World War). The translation by Celia Hawkesworth is superb. I found Daville’s persistent misery for over 500 pages a little tedious; and although all the characters (not all of whom I have mentioned in this review) are vividly, if rather repetitively, portrayed, they did strike me at times as being a little over the top. So very nearly five stars – but, for me, just not quite.

Like War and Peace, Bosnian Chronicle is set in the years of Napoleon’s greatest triumphs and disasters. And I would argue that it is almost as great as Tolstoy’s book in the many overarching themes that Andric addresses and his penetrating insights into the way men and women behave. I agree with Misha Glenny that it is ‘one of the most elevating reading experiences I can recall. An absolute gem’. It is astonishing that this and Andric’s other masterpiece, The Bridge over the Drina, aren’t better know. I can’t believe that his greatness won’t be recognised and celebrated again soon. To me he is up there with Tolstoy in his extraordinary grasp of human nature and his deeply sympathetic view of the human condition, all expressed in lyrical prose splendidly translated here by Celia Hawkesworth. If you haven’t yet discovered Andric you are in for a treat.

Very well written historical novel set in Bonia during 1808-ought to be much better known. Good value from Wordery

Excellent writer!

1808年，オスマン帝国支配下のボスニア，トラヴニク(Travnik)に赴任したフランス領事の目から見た日々を描く(ボスニア語で書かれたものの英訳)．異文化との接触，敵対国オーストリア領事との政治的駆け引きと人間的交流，若い部下とのジェネレーションギャップ，ユダヤ教やイスラーム教など異教徒との関係など，様々な問題をめぐって語られる．フランス本国では絶頂期のナポレオンがロシアでの大敗を経て廃位へと追い込まれ，1814年に領事館をたたんで帰国するまでが描かれている．背景には，東洋的異文化への期待，ナポレオンのヨーロッパ支配への期待が数々の経験から裏切られ，次第に諦観へと変わってゆく主人公の思いが流れている．概ね各章毎に異なるテーマが割り当てられ，現実の描写に始って，その背景に関する哲学的，宗教的，歴史的考察，省察へと展開されてゆく形である．考察部分がときに冗長に流れる嫌いがあり，それほど新しい視点があるとも思えないが，当時の政治社会的な状況が細かく書き込まれている点は非常に興味深い．東洋への蔑視的視点が少なからずあることは，時代背景から止むを得ないところである．著者は自らも外交官としての経験をもち，本書をふくめ地方色豊かな文学を発信したことに対してノーベル文学賞を受賞している．果たしてノーベル賞に値するのかという疑問はあるが，パールバックが，清朝末期の中国を描いて受賞したのと同じく，扱う時代と場所の組み合わせの稀少性，東洋的異文化が西洋人に与える衝撃の成せる技なのかもしれない．