Rose of Sarajevo

It’s easy to distinguish a good book from the “not-very-good” ones. The latter is forgotten sooner or later, but a good story written lovingly stays for you for a long time, almost forever. You may forget the names of the characters, the story line may fade after some time but the warmth it created when you read it, always…always stays. Last Train to Istanbul was one of the finest books I have read in a long time.Selva and Sabiha are daughters of a respectable retired diplomat Fazil Resat Pasa and live comfortably in Istanbul. They are raised liberally and educated to have independent opinions. Sabiha, the elder one traditionally marries Macit, another diplomat who holds an important position in the government and spends more time making decisions for the country than at home. Selva, the younger one is rebellious and marries Rafael, a Jewish non-Muslim. This is apparently not-acceptable to their parents and they leave Turkey and settle in France to avoid embarrassment for both the families. While Sabiha struggled with her husband’s prolonged absence from home, Selva found bliss in her meagre means with the love of her life. That was until the Nazis started occupying France and Jews started living under the imminent danger of being sent to camps of Gestapo.Sisters may be miles apart but they never cease to care for each other. Sabiha requests their family friend, Tarik, to help Selva get out of France when he is sent to Turkish Consulate in Paris. Tarik gets Selva, Rafael and their son along with a couple of dozen other people with Turkish passports on a train to Istanbul. This train is their last hope of escape from the hands of Nazi Gestapo. Except that this train is supposed to pass through Germany and many other war countries before reaching its final destination. Imagine, a train full of Jews passing through Germany.There is absolutely nothing that I didn’t like about this book. The plot, which is generously inspired from true events, is absolutely great. The writing is seamless and with just the right amount of ups and downs. The characters are so vivid that you think you personally know a Selva or Sabiha or Tarik. The emotional conflicts between these characters seem very real. The struggle of survival can make a person selfish and one may also be forgiven for this. But there are people who do not hesitate to help even when it poses danger to their lives. The story is strewn with such small incidents which instill your faith in humanity.

Rose of Sarajevo...Is it fiction or is it a history..This Novel seems to dangle between these two. Through the story of Nimitha and her family, Author covers the bloody war which finally cut Yugoslavia into pieces. The Croats,Bosnians ,relegions, there are many players in this historical Novel as you can say itWhile going through how a family gets disintegrated between the bloodiest war, modern war has seen book also gives us a peak into lives of real people who lived during these difficult timesAnyone who would like to know what really happened in this part of world during this timultanious time can go through this book,Those looking for just a nice light read better don't

Though the book is not bio or semi bio but it contains the inhumanity of war and it's outcome.It has a story of love, family, friendship, patriotism and also the dark side of autocratic leaders who led countries and people not into wars but to the hell and created inhumanity in their hearts towards the fellow humans.

Hats off to Ayesa Kullin for coming up with this important piece of literature. I haven't read Kullin before. All that I was attracted towards this book is its riveting title. Kullin has touched my heart with her style of narration. The novel is important because it is a part of a historic nightmarish event...it paints out a true harrowing picture of the times. It helps us in understanding those times and moreover it's appeal not lost even in present. Ayse Kullin has more or less created something near to a classic in the form of Rose of Sarajevo

Please read this only if you are deeply Interested in very gory images of the Bosnia - Serbian war. Not for the faint hearted.

The world has gone silent on the fate of the Muslims of the former Yugoslavia. But this book brings it all to life and explains the conflict in heart wrenching honesty, through it's characters.

This book is an essential read for anyone interested in the history of the balkans. It gives a quite realistic account of the sufferings endured by the bosniaks in the background of a good story. Well written and paced with interesting and complex characters

Good read.Good read! Makes one understand the Serb-Bosnian situation that was prevalent. Also to know the evil that human beings can tend to when possessed by the demon of hatred & war.

When the trouble in the Balkans kicked off in the early 1990s I was determined to follow it and try to understand what was going on. It was the first war of great 'relevance' in my life time - one happening within Europe on our doorstep at a time when I was old enough to pay attention and travelled enough to recognise some of the issues. The problem was that it VERY quickly got more than complicated and way beyond confusing. Books about that period - whether they are fiction or non-fiction - can help those of us who got lost too quickly amongst the terrible massacres and atrocities, baffled by the unpronounceable names of the leaders and the cities, to try to understand now, what we couldn't understand at the time.There are times when the book does feel a bit like it's trying to shoe horn a sort of 'brief history of the Balkans' into the fictional format in a rather forced way. That said, it did answer some very basic questions that had been playing on my mind about the ethnic make-up of the area. Undoubtedly it's one-sided because the writer is Turkish and the main characters are Bosniaks - Bosnian Muslims. But every book about this conflict is guaranteed to be bring its own biases.It's not an easy read because some of the material is deeply disturbing. Those passages are well written and don't labour the suffering. They present cold hard info and then move on because there's no need to over-play such horror. Sadly it's also not an easy read because most of the characters are basically rather unpleasant and unlikeable. The heroes and heroines are not 'nice' people, their relationships are as strained and tortured as their environment and the ending, when it comes, is unsatisfying and unmemorable. Whether the writing is poor or the translation is flawed, this book just doesn't 'flow' well but if you're looking for a book on the conflict from the Bosniak perspective, it's well worth a read.

The story of the book is based in Sarajevo in Bosnia and the beginning of war in Yugoslavia at the end of 1980's. It tells a story of a Bosnian family and their lives during that time. The story is so well written and you really get to know the main character of the book Nimeta and I got so engrossed in the story. I am Croatian and I was a child when a war in Yugoslavia broke so I don't remember that much about the war. So when I was reading this book I got really upset at horrific atrocities that happen in Croatia and Bosnia in particular during the war. It was very difficult to read some chapters in the book and they made me cry. The writer wanted to shock the readers by writing horrific true events that happened during the was so everyone knows the truth. This book is very interesting and it's celebrating the resilience of people in a country broken by war. I would have liked the story to be longer cos I did not want to finish reading it.

It was more a serious political book than a novel. There were a lot of things that I was ignorant about and had to look up on Google eg history of Yugoslavia and all its countries, religious differences, domination by the Ottomans/Hapsburgs in order to understand what the conflicts were about. Eg why is 90% of Kosovans ethnic Albanians? It would have helped to have had more explanation in the book. Right towards the end of the book the uncle and father of Fiko relate the country’s history to him but that should have come earlier. I found Nimeta annoying as a character, dismissing her mother for being supportive and organised yet neglecting her own children.

I've just finished reading the book; and to be honest, about half way through I was seriously thinking of stopping. I found it heavy going and confusing. family members. who had not been mentioned previously, suddenly took on major roles... The story jumped from place to place and different times without rhyme or reason. All of which I found surprising as I have also read Last Train to Istanbul which I enjoyed enormously.Then, all of a sudden, the compelling story started to be told of one of the most shameful periods of recent European history. Another ethnic cleansing which was allowed to happen in the 1990s - as if noone had learnt anything from the Holocaust. It is an important story to be told, but I feel that maybe the telling got lost in this novel.I got to the end and felt that I'd missed something, it came out of the blue and I was left disappointed, as if I'd lost the last chapter somehow. I'm glad I continued with book but ....If the author decides to revisit this topic, I would love something about the rebuilding of the Balkans, how the different ethnicities were able to rebuild their countries and their identities...

A very interesting book about a subject I knew little about despite reading about it carefullyin the 1990s when the horrific wars were taking place, this book through a story about families and theirfriends clarified some aspects about the history of Bosnia and the Bosniaks. There wereparts of the book I could hardly bear to read, so tragic and horrific were the circumstancesof the characters, who though fictitious displayed the reality of people's lives in Bosniaand other parts of the former Yugoslavia at that time. Apart from the impact of the war,the universal circumstances of their lives, made complicated by the gradual developmentif the war were very moving. This is the second book I have read by Ayse Kulin and I hopeto read more of her books.