In this essay, the Bosnian Nobel Prize-winner – best known for The Bridge on the Drina – writes mordantly on life and death, and on the nature and responsibility of the artist. Translated by Celia Hawkesworth.
I devoured this book in less than two hours. I kept having to pause and reflect on some of Andric's reflections, they are so closely resembling my own. Especially Sleeplessness, and Signs by the Roadside. Conversation with Goya is puzzling, since the two men could not have actually met. Goya died in the early 1800's while Andric was born in the late 1800s. I must study this more closely. Over all this book is a fascinating insight to a wonderful, brilliant, complex man and his moments of angst mixed with joy are delightfully bipolar in nature. I highly recommend this read!
Stacy Zimmerman
I have read several works by the author in the original, including his essays on Goya, Bolivar and other themes. It is regretable that the publisher characterizes the author as Bosnian, succunbing to the current political pressures in the West. While Mr. Andric was born in Bosnia he lived most of his life in Belgrade, was a diplomat of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and was regarded as a qunitesential Yugoslav until his death in early seventies. Belgrade was, and is, intellectually and artistically the most vibrant and tolerant city in the Balkans. Mr. Andric thrived in it. To classify him as a Bosnian author is of a crudely political and tendentious intent, an undoubted insult to the man who was awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.
Simon Saivil
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