The Cellist of Sarajevo
By: Steven Galloway / Narrated By: Gareth Armstrong
Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
A truly touching work
The Cellist of Sarajevo is based on a true event, where a cellist in the Sarajevo of the ‘90s played an adagio each day to honor victims of a bread line slaughter. He was an easy shot for snipers, and he played amidst the ruins of the city, absolutely defying the odds.
The cellist is the anchor for the book as three townspeople are touched by his endeavors as they go about their business, trying to simply lead “normal” lives. One is trying to go to his job as a baker; one is trying to get water for his family; and one young woman turns her deadly gun on the snipers, trying to keep the cellist alive. Through their struggles, we see the horror show that was Bosnia, that was Sarajevo, even as the world turned a blind eye. The characters don’t see how the world won’t intervene, even as they lose hope day by day, blast by blast, sniper bullet by sniper bullet.
There is an ongoing tension that’ll keep you riveted and on the edge of your seat because you just never know when that next bullet is going to come. Will it get you, or will it get the person right in front of you, right beside you? The snipers have wicked senses of humor, and the characters don’t know if they are unwittingly providing snipers with motives to pick them as targets by doing this or that, by struggling mightily or by being furtive. And since we, the listeners, care about the characters pretty early on, it makes for gripping reading.
Gareth Armstrong does an excellent job with narration. He manages to fill the characters’ voices with emotion even as they are numbed out to the strife and horror that surrounds them. He does the woman, Arrow’s, voice as her mind whirs, thinking like a sniper, losing part of her humanity as she makes the choice to meet bullet death with bullet death, turning into a killer. And at the very end, when each of the characters must decide how they wish to continue their lives in the battleground of the city, Armstrong gives them hope, fatigue, strength, sorrow.
Truly a touching book, and even though I’ve listened to the memoirs, Love Thy Neighbor, and My War Gone By, I Miss it So, I felt The Cellist of Sarajevo brought me a real sense of rawness to the experience of living in a time of war.
I do recommend this book, indeed!
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