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A vivid depiction of the suffering history has imposed upon the people of Bosnia from the late sixteenth century to the beginning of World War I, The Bridge on the Drina earned Ivo Andric the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961. 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. Spanning generations, nationalities, and creeds, the bridge stands witness to the countless lives played out upon it: Radisav, the workman, who tries to hinder its construction and is impaled on its highest point; to the lovely Fata, who throws herself from its parapet to escape a loveless marriage; to Milan, the gambler, who risks everything in one last game on the bridge with the devil his opponent; to Fedun, the young soldier, who pays for a moment of spring forgetfulness with his life. War finally destroys the span, and with it the last descendant of that family to which the Grand Vezir confided the care of his pious bequest - the bridge.
Author
Ivan "Ivo" Andrić (Cyrillic: Иво Андрић) was a Yugoslav and Bosnian novelist, short story writer and Nobel prizewinner. His writings deal mainly with life in his native Bosnia under the Ottoman Empire. His house in Travnik is now a Museum. His Belgrade flat on Andrićev Venac hosts the Museum of Ivo Andrić and the Ivo Andrić Foundation. After the Second World War, he spent most of his time in his Belgrade home, held ceremonial posts in the Communist government of Yugoslavia and was a Bosnia and Herzegovina parliamentarian. He was also a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 1961, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country". He donated the prize money to libraries in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His works include The Bridge on the Drina, Bosnian Chronicle (aka Chronicles of Travnik), and The Woman from Sarajevo. These were written during WW2 while he was living quietly in Belgrade and published in 1945. They are often referred to as the "Bosnian Trilogy" as they were published simultaneously and had been written in the same period. However, they're connected only thematically. Other works include Ex Ponto (1918), Unrest (Nemiri, '20), The Journey of Alija Đerzelez (Put Alije Đerzeleza, 1920), The Vizier's Elephant (Priča o vezirovom slonu, 1948; tr. 1962), The Damned Yard (Prokleta avlija, 1954), and Omer-Pasha Latas (Omerpaša Latas, released posthumously in 1977)
