Product Description
The Bridge Over the Drina
Author: Ivo Andric
Format: Paperback
In the Bosnian town of Visegrad, a stone bridge commissioned in the sixteenth century becomes the centre of three centuries of Balkan history.
Built under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the bridge at Visegrad at first unites a divided town. Generations gather on its arches: traders, soldiers, children, lovers, and gamblers, each leaving their mark as empires rise and fall.
As Ottoman rule gives way to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, daily life shifts under new laws, new loyalties and growing nationalist tensions. Through characters such as Radisav, who resists the bridge's construction, and Fata, who leaps from its parapet rather than submit to marriage, The Bridge Over the Drina traces the intimate dramas that unfold against imperial control.
When the collision of forces in the Balkans ignites the First World War in 1914, the bridge that has endured centuries of occupation and upheaval finally faces destruction.
The Bridge Over the Drina reveals how ordinary lives are shaped, divided, and bound together by the pressures of empire.
About the Author
Ivo Andric was born in 1892 in Travnik, Bosnia of Croat parents and grew up alongside Orthodox Christians, Moslems and Roman Catholics in Višegrad, the town on the banks of the Drina where his book is set. Until 1941 he served as a Yugoslav diplomat, then, placed under house arrest in Belgrade by the occupying Germans, Andric turned to writing. In 1961 he was awarded the Noble prize for literature. He died in 1975.
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