Finished. About a bridge, a beautiful bridge. Through this bridge one finds hope. But the book is also about the passage of time and the folly of man and the peoples and cultures of the Balkans. One percieves the smallness of man. There are no clear answers. Is it foolish to hope for a better future, and what is better? How does one judge progress? If there is kindness isn't life good? People are weak and mean and foolish, but at the same time they are kind and good and hard working. Both are true, and both will probably always be true. I believe the book says this. Snel, Guido (2004). "The Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip". In Cornis-Pope, Marcel; Neubauer, John (eds.). History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Vol.1. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 978-90-272-3452-0.

People begin to rely more and more on this bridge, and it soon becomes essential to both trade and daily life. It opens up the world for the people of Višegrad, and it remains important for several centuries. The dreadful events occurring in Sarajevo over the past several months turn my mind to a remarkable historical novel from the land we used to call Yugoslavia, Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina."—John M. Mohan, Des Moines Sunday RegisterWachtel, Andrew Baruch (1998). Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-3181-2. Stokes, Gale (1993). The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-987919-9. Published in 1945 by the Nobel laureate Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina tells the violent story of Bosnia through events on and around Visegrad's magnificent 16th-century Ottoman bridge. But controversy swirls around the project – and what exactly Kusturica is trying to say with it. Is it just a sort of Bosnian Serb theme park? He maintains that his aim is to teach Bosnia's Serbs about their past, including the bits they do not like. The central historical outcome of Visegrad is changed with the Austrians and most especially with the coming of the railroad. The railroad came into Visegrad from the west, but didn’t cross the bridge, rather it then veered south and continued its easterly route much to the south. Thus there was no longer much reason to cross the bridge except to get from one section of Visegrad to the other. For hundreds of years it had been an extremely important route between Bosnia and Serbia and on toward Turkey (to the southeast). Now there was no reason to use this famous Bridge on the Drina except to get into the tiny and relatively uninteresting east Visegrad section of town.

Binder, David (2013). Farewell, Illyria. Budapest: Central European University Press. ISBN 978-615-5225-74-1. Hasecic also denied she was a nationalist. But she pooh-poohed Kusturica's claim to a multicultural vision. "He has never, for a single second, shown any interest in the plight of the non-Serbian population," she said. The Bridge on the Drina is, at its most surface level also on a much more profound one, just what the title says it is: a story about a bridge. This historical novel gives readers the history of the Mehmed Paša Sokolovic Bridge built in the 16th century in Višegrad, Bosnia. This bridge initially unified nations and became a symbol of the state of affairs in Yugoslavian society before ultimately being destroyed during World War I. Nikolić, Maja (4 March 2021). "Muzej književnosti i pozorišne umjetnosti BiH slavi 60 godina postojanja". Hrvatski Glasnik (in Croatian) . Retrieved 28 December 2021. Ivan "Ivo" Andrić (Cyrillic: Иво Андрић), a native Bosnian, composed short stories, mainly with life under the Ottoman Empire. His house in Travnik now functions as a museum. His flat on Andrićev Venac in Belgrade hosts the museum of and the foundation.He was born a subject of the Ottoman Empire but in a province which the Sultan in Istanbul, Abdülhamid II, controlled only in name. In 1878, fourteen years before Andrić’s birth, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had secured the right to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina as a result of decisions taken at the Congress of Berlin. The Sultan may still have ruled in name but Kaiser Franz Joseph I was now its de facto ruler. Vienna’s subsequent decision to annex the two provinces in 1908, stripping the Sultan of his nominal suzerainty, was a key moment in the events leading up to the outbreak of the First World War.

A great stone bridge built three centuries ago in the heart of the Balkans by a Grand Vezir of the Ottoman Empire dominates the setting of Andric's stunning novel. Andrić understood Bosnia as a country where East and West meet and it is surely no coincidence that the image of the bridge is probably the most persistent metaphor throughout his work. In 1925 he published his story ‘The Bridge at Žepa’–Žepa was another small town in eastern Bosnia – which in many respects anticipates his great novel by almost two decades. Indeed, in 1933 he published an essay entitled ‘Bridges’: The second section is exceptionally brilliant. It is a long series of short chapters, each detailing some aspect of the life of some persons or group in the village. Each chapter is like a separate short story, but out of it all emerges a clear picture of the village which sees itself as the center of the world and doesn’t much know or care about the rest of the world. In the process the reader gets a profound sense of understanding this village and these people. It seems there is a unique life form which has developed in the several hundred years with the bridge and Visegrad and its inhabitants live as if this is the center of the world itself. The historian Tomislav Dulić interprets the destruction of the bridge at the novel's conclusion as having several symbolic meanings. On the one hand, it marks the end of traditional Ottoman life in the town and signals the unstoppable oncome of modernity, while on the other, it foreshadows the death and destruction that await Bosnia and Herzegovina in the future. Dulić describes the ending as "deeply pessimistic", and attributes Andrić's pessimism to the events of World War II. [39] Reception and legacy [ edit ] Andrić signing books at the Belgrade Book Fair After the Second World War, he spent most of his time in his home at Belgrade, held ceremonial posts in the Communist government, and served as a parliamentarian of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He also joined as a member of the Serbian academy of sciences and arts.

For all the imperialist disdain which the new regime evinced, Habsburg rule introduced significant investment in health, education and transport that benefited the local population. Progress, however, often fell victim to the competitive rancour between the Empire’s two governments in Vienna and Budapest who had established an unwieldy system of joint control over Bosnia.