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I was really looking forward to reading this book but upon actually reading it I was disappointed and -I have to admit- started to skip whole paragraphs towards the end. From the reviews I had read I expected a sweeping epic of Bosnia and the Balkans, but that’s not really what the book is.

The beginning, when the construction of the Mehmed Paša Sokolović bridge in Višegrad is narrated, is very interesting and vivid, not to say lurid in places. Mehmed Paša was actually a Serbian (Christian) Bosniak, who was abducted as a young boy by the Turks under their notorious blood tax system (‘designed�� to minimise internecine disloyalty by competing Muslim groups and families in the military and public service of the Ottoman Empire), renamed, forcibly converted to Islam, and then rose through the ranks to become Grand Vizier to the Sultan. He commissioned the building of the (now) eponymous bridge over the Drina, which in the book symbolises the only firm and solid structure against a background of constant and often violent change typical of the Balkans.

Although the book spans a long period from the 16th century, when the bridge was built, to the beginning of the Great War at the beginning of the 20th century, the story is not so much an epic as a (temporally and topically) inconsistent series of portraits of Višegrad townsfolk: Turks (Muslims), Serbs (Orthodox Christians), Jews (Sephardic and later Ashkenazi), and more recently Austrians and Hungarians. I found that the narrative is strong when telling stories of actual (or fictional) occurrences, but weak(er) when talking about abstract concepts (e.g. politics), especially towards the end.

Also I feel there are issues with the translation into English. Edwards makes a brave effort but the language now seems oddly stilted and dated, at least to me. Even I know that in the Balkans they drink slivovitz, not ‘plum brandy��, and the Sephardic Jews of Višegrad probably speak Ladino rather than ‘Spanish��. Anyway, I bet the book is much better in the original but I have no way of finding out, as I don’t understand any Serbo-Croatian.

So in conclusion: either I had unrealistic expectations of what the scope and range of this book were, or I was influenced by the fact that it won the author a Literature Nobel Prize. Maybe both; anyway I’m more than a bit disappointed.