Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This book 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.
So let’s discuss The Bridge on the Drina now.
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.
Did you find that to be relevant to your experiences in Bosnia?
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.
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As a Dutch army captain Arnold was commanding officer of the unit that secured Tuzla airbase in Bosnia for incoming UN aid in 1994, a year before the overthrow of the enclave Srebrenica in the former Yugoslavia. His acclaimed debut novel, De koning van Tuzla (King of Tuzla), and his collection of poetry, Yugoslav Requiem, are now available in English. His new novel, Angel, will be available in English later this year.
