A recent essay by well-travelled B.C. novelist Jim Christy complains that many people nurtured by creative writing programs lack sufficient "real world"; experience to produce believable fiction. Depicting the human condition within a war zone minus political context, The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway could serve Christy as a case in point.

No less than 2003 Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee has recommended it "a gripping story of Sarajevo under siege,"; but The Cellist can be dismissed as an exercise in imagination, lacking memorable characters.

Kenan, a forty-something family man, risks his life every four days to retrieve fresh water for his family. Dragan, a 64-year-old bakery worker, survives as a loner. And a young female sniper protects the cellist whenever he plays Albinoni's Adagio to honour the dead. Her name is revealed in the final sentence.

The title and its intriguing cover photo of a tuxedo-clad cellist in the rubble are referenced in an afterword:

"At four o'clock in the afternoon on 27 May 1992, during the siege of Sarajevo, several mortar shells struck a group of people waiting to buy bread behind the market on Vase Miskina. Twenty-two people were killed and at least seventy were wounded. For the next twenty-two days Vedran Smailovic, a renowned local cellist, played Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor at the site in honour of the dead.";

It makes for great jacket copy but Galloway's cellist-unnamed-is at best a supporting character.

Previously composer David Wilde had written a cello piece recorded by Yo Yo Ma called "The Cellist of Sarajevo.";

Ten years ago, Elizabeth Wellburn and artist Deryk Houston of Victoria collaborated with Smailovic for a fictional children's picture book about the cellist, Echoes from the Square (Rubicon). Smailovic now lives in Northern Ireland.
978-0-307-39703-4

[BCBW 2008]