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Joseph Hitrec (translation)
Set in the town of Travnik, Bosnian Chronicle (Travnicka hronika) presents the struggle for supremacy in a region that stubbornly refuses to submit to any outsider. The era is Napoleanic and the novel, both in its historical scope and psychological subtley, Tolstoyan. In its portray of conflict and fierce ethnic loyalties, the story is also eerily relevant. Ottoman viziers, French consuls, and Austrian plenipotentiaries are consumed by an endless game of diplomacy and double-dealing: expansive and courtly face-to-face, brooding and scheming behind closed doors. As they have for centuries, the Bosnians themselves observe and endure the machinations of greater powers that vie, futilely, to absorb them. Ivo Andric's masterwork is imbued with the richness and complexity of a region that has brought so much tragedy to our century and known so little peace.
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BOSNIAN �HRONI�LE
Works of Ivo Andric
Ex Ponto-POEMS, 1918 Unrest-POEMS, 1919 The Voyage of Ali Djerzelez-NOVELLA, 1920 Tales I-1924 Tales II-1931 Conversations with Goya-ESSAY, 1934 Tales III-1936 The Bridge on the Drina-NOVEL, 1945 Bosnian Chronicle-NOVEL, 1945 Miss-NOVEL, 1945 New Tales-1948 The Vizier's Elephant-NOVELLA, 1948 Devil's Yard-NOVELLA, 1954 Under the Hornbeam-NOVELLA, 1952 Faces-sTORIES, 1960 Notes on Goya-ESSAY, 1962
BOSNIAN @ :CHRONICLE: @
BY
IVO
ANDRIC
Translated from the Serbo-Croatian JOSEPH HITREC
m ARCADE PUBLISHING
•
NEW YOR�
by
Copyri ght© 1963 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and re trieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. First Arcade Paperb ack Edition 1993
The characters and events in this b ook are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Andric, Ivo, 1892-1975. [Travnicka hronika. English] Bosnian chronicle I by I vo Andric ; translated from the Serbo-Croatian by Joseph Hitrec-First Arcade paperback ed. p. em. ISBN 1-55970-236-2
I. Travnik I. Title
(Travnik,
PGI418 .A6T713
Bosnia
and
Hercegovina)- H istory-Fiction.
1993
891.8'235-dc20
93-8695
Published in the U nited States by Arcade Publishing, Inc., New York Distrib u ted by Little, Brown and Company
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I BP
Printed in the United States of America
Translator�s Note
I
n October 1 96 1 , the Swedish Academy awarded Ivo Andric the Nobel Prize for literature, citing him for "the epic force with which he has depicted themes and human destinies from the history of his country." The Academy paid special tribute to the three works that comprise his Bosnian trilogy-of which Bosnian Chronicle is the longest and most monumental. The other two are The Bridge on the Drina and Miss. While the subject of all three are the people of Bosnia, Bos nian Chronicle delves deepest into those elements of the tur bulent Bosnian heritage which give it its unique ethnic and spiritual flavor. This is the territory-roughly the size of West Virgini a-which has been the contending ground of Eastern and Western cultures for almost two thousand years. Roman legions and the phalanxes of Philip of Macedon have roamed over it in search of plunder and new frontiers. Byzantium and the Church of St. Peter have wrangled for its soul. The Otto man tide, cresting into Europe in the sixteenth century, made of Bosnia a buffer province and a base for its incursions against