The Bridge on the Drina

"This book told me a lot about the Bosnian population because it describes life in the small town of Visegrad over four centuries, from the Ottoman occupation to the start of the First World War. The focus is the stone bridge across the Drina which links east and west, poor and rich, and Serbs, Croats, Jews and Muslims who live together. He shows the lives of ordinary people set against major historical events. Yes. While writing King of Tuzla I inserted vignettes about the local population, as he does, without any prejudice. Showing the reader what life was like. I think that was the way I looked at the population, or tried to, without prejudice, but my sympathy was with the underdog, with the Muslims, of course. But The Bridge on the Drina is a page-turner and you get under the skin of the country. Suddenly you understand the tensions that simmer under a seemingly peaceful exterior and how the differences between Christianity and Islam rub up against each other, and reading that back you look differently at the situation you’re in."

"Written in 1943 by the Bosnian Nobel Laureate Ivo Andric, this is a novel about the darker side of the Ottoman Empire – the enforced labour of local Christian subjects in modern day Bosnia. Commissioned in 1572 by the Grand Vizier Mehmed Pasha, the famous bridge (which still stands today) is the epicentre of a community that experienced all the turbulence of the Balkan region throughout the last few centuries of Ottoman rule. This is a 20th century classic."