The Cellist of Sarajevo

The Cellist of Sarajevo 

by 

Steven Galloway

LOVED this book.  I had never heard of it until last week when I was at the library and they had it advertised as the Maryland One Book for 2012 (a program put on by the humanities council, encouraging everyone to read the same book). I reserved the book, and went to pick it up Saturday, and by Sunday it was finished. It was that good, a literal 'can't put it down' moment. It reminded me of why I am passionate about reading. To be transported, to open my mind and heart to other experiences and emotions. 

I remembered between the ages of 10 and 13 I read every book I could get my hands on about the holocaust. I read Number the Stars, The Devil's Arithmetic, The Diary of Anne Frank, and my very favorite, The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom.  Why was I obsessed? Because I had discovered the power of books. What they could do to a person's soul. How they could change me. Books like The Secret Garden and The Lord of the Rings, unlocked magic and beauty....but my holocaust books allowed me to glimpse sorrow and despair and courage that I am not sure, as yet, that I will ever encounter in person in my lifetime. 

Ironically, as I was reading their stories, the city of Sarajevo was under siege. From May April 5th, 1992 until February 29th, 1996 mortars were launched into the city one after the other, snipers hid in the skeletal remains of apartment buildings and picked people off in the street, one by one, as they fearfully made their way through the city in search of food and water for their families. An estimated 15,000 people were killed (1,500 were children), and 56,000 wounded (15,000 were children). 

Maybe somewhere along the meandering route of my formal education I picked up a sound byte or read a paragraph about this city's suffering. But I did not know what happened. What was happening as I laid, stomach down, in the grass of my backyard, turning the pages of my holocaust books wondering how something like it could've ever have happened in the world. 

The Cellist of Sarajevo centers around the true event of a professional cellist who plays at the site of a mortar blast that killed 22 of his neighbors as they waited in line to buy bread. He plays in the open air for 22 days, one day for every person killed. Intertwined are the fictional, but based on fact, stories of several other individuals surviving in the war-torn city. I don't feel as if I can go into too much detail, without making their plights seem trite. I will just say that this book is a must-read, five stars, etc..etc...

Also, if you read this, and can still handle a little more insight into the mentality of war, I would recommend The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien. It's like crawling inside the heads of soldiers of the Vietnam War.