Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo. Melbourne: Text Publishing 2008, ISBN 9781921351303, RRP 29.95
For 22 days Vedran Smailovic played the cello in the ruined Sarajevo market place. He honoured the 22 people killed there in mortar fire. The image is haunting. It was a symbol of hope, intimating that something might transcend the horror of the four year siege of the city. It inspired David Wilde's cello piece, ‘The Cellist of Sarajevo'. It also inspires this moving short novel by the young Canadian novelist, Steven Galloway.
The central but wordless figure of the novel is the unnamed cellist. The three protagonists of the novel meet neither him nor one another, but respond to his music. They are linked by their common need to walk through the besieged city.
Dragan's wife and daughter fled to Italy before the siege began. He goes through the streets to work at a bakery where he can also eat. Each fourth day Kenan makes his way through the streets to gather water for his wife and children as well as for an acerbic old neighbour, Mrs Ristovski. Arrow is a sniper. She has taken her new name in order to forget her old life. She now must kill enemy soldiers on the hills opposite. She is then charged with protecting the cellist from an enemy sniper. Because she has lost fear she is at home in the streets, having no reason to live.
In the streets the fragility of flesh is undisguised. Those who walk are constantly and arbitrarily exposed to the snipers in the hills above the city. Each journey involves a multitude of small decisions laden with consequence — which road and bridge to take, when to cross exposed roads, whether to greet or turn away from neighbours, whether to go to the help of those shot or to stand in safety. The constant presence of death, the fear and the need to walk the streets day after day, and the daily compromises made in the name of safety, put everyone's humanity at risk.
Galloway's narrative follows each of the characters as they walk through the city. It is not about the characters — their background and relationships are sketched lightly. Rather it is about character as this is established and tested in the small decisions and encounters of each day. The narrative moves slowly, allowing the reader to feel the agoraphobia