The Siege of Sarajevo is depicted in Steven Galloway’s award winning novel The Cellist of Sarajevo. The Canadian author Steven Galloway has written multiple books, of which The Cellist of Sarajevo is the most widely known. Although the plot is made up, Galloway includes many facts concerning the Bosnian war, more specifically, the siege of Sarajevo. The Bosnian war started when the EU decided to vote if Bosnia and Herzegovina should be an independent country. On the day the EU declared Bosnia and Herzegovina its own country, the Serbs laid siege to the capital, Sarajevo. They killed lots people, not only in Sarajevo but all over the country. In this novel, Galloway combines history, action, excitement, and suspense to form The Cellist of Sarajevo.
The book starts in an apartment, where a cellist lives. He has lost almost everything, but although his parents were killed, and although he witnessed a mortar killing twenty two people, one thing he has not lost yet is hope. The Cellist plays Albinoni’s Adagio, which an Italian musicologist recreated after he found four bars of the base line in a firebombed music library. Now the Cellist plays this for twenty two days, for the twenty two people who were hit by a mortar while they were waiting to buy bread. The Adagio gives him hope, and it gives hope to the people who hear the Cellist play. This is what unites the other characters despite them not knowing each other.
Not everyone in Sarajevo is nonviolent. Arrow is a skilled and well trained sniper who fights for Sarajevo, against the men on the hills. The men on the hills, as Galloway calls them, are the Serbs, besieging Sarajevo. Although Arrow kills many Serb soldiers, she does not harm civilians. She is “a weapon” and she is independent. Arrow kills whoever she wants to kill, goes where she wants to go. Despite her skill, Arrow is at conflict with herself. One day she is assigned a mission to protect the Cellist. She knows it will not be easy. She knows that she might fail, but what she does not know are the surprises that lay ahead of her.

Unlike Arrow, Kenan lives a more calm life with his wife and children. He knows how bad the war is, but Kenan, unlike most other people, still has hope. He tries to imagine how life would be like without the war, with “a breakfast cooked on the stove, and watching television next to the warmth of the heater.” Unfortunately the war is going on and Kenan has to go a long way to get clean water. The journey is long and dangerous. He meets his friend and they have a noteworthy discussion about the war. Kenan has to go through places, where enemy snipers are shooting at, he has to watch a mortar kill masses of people. He has to cross an absolutely demolished bridge and to make things worse, he has to witness the corruption in the city, but will those terrifying experiences change him? Will he lose all the hope he once had?
The last character we get introduced to is Dragan. Although Dragan still has a good job, he does not have a good life. His wife and his child could leave Sarajevo before the war started. His apartment got hit by a mortar and is no more. Now Dragan has to live with his sister, and her husband detests Dragan. Dragan hates everything in this new Sarajevo because “everything around him is a peculiar shade of gray.” Dragan goes to the bakery to get away from his brother-in-law, when he crosses an intersection, where a sniper is. In the period of time he is there, the sniper shoots at several people, so Dragan gets delayed. During that time Dragan meets a good friend, Emina. They have a long talk, and when they decide to depart, Emina gets shot in the arm by the sniper. Dragan is shocked, but will this experience change him, or will he want to continue his life like before?
Galloway wrote the story well. He uses temporal distortion, which means that the different characters’ stories start on different days but almost end on the same day. For example, Arrow’s part of the story is a couple days longer than Kenan’s, but Kenan’s part is longer than Dragan’s. The use of in media res, meaning the story starts in the middle, makes the novel more fun to read because you don’t have to read through a tedious introduction. The story starts with “It [a mortar] screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort.” The loss of information is made up through flashbacks and thoughts of the characters. For instance, Arrow thinks of how life was when she was young. She remembers driving around Sarajevo thinking of its beauty. This shows that The Cellist of Sarajevo is well written, and insightful. Galloway wrote this novel, not only for a specific group of people, but for everyone.