The Fortress (Writings from an Unbound Europe) [Paperback]

One of essential books in Bosnian, Balkan or Slavic literature...Ahmed Shabo returns home to 18th century Sarajevo from the war in Russia. Numbered by the deaths in battle or by suicide of nearly his entire military unit, he is devastated to learn that most of his family has died of disease during his absence. Through the help of a friend and the love of a woman Ahmed overcomes the psychological anguish of war only to find that he as emerged a reflective and contemplative man in a society that does not value and often will not tolerate the subversive implications of these qualities. Some remarks Ahmed makes at a party - about human decency and fairness and the tendency of the powerful to trample over them - lead him into the dark labyrinth of the novel's plot, in which his encounters with love and violence, intrigue, tyranny and intellectual adventure continuosly reshape his destiny and his sense of the meaning of his life. (excerpt from back of book)

Ahmet Shabo is a young man from 18th century Ottoman Bosnia, who returns to his native Sarajevo after experiencing all the horrors of war during battles in distant Russia. The war has a major psychological effect on him, and he seems unable or unwilling to rejoin the society. A kind friend offers him a decent job with which he'll be able to support himself and perhaps even advance in social circles. Things go wrong for Ahmet, however, after a party that he gets invited to thrown by some very important city officials. His struggles to reclaim a place in the World become the main focal point of the book from then on.

Like in his more famous novel "The Death and the Dervish," Selimovi'c manages to embed the personal struggles of one man under a totalitarian communist regime into a much more distant past and an equally oppressive medieval Ottoman rule. One can imagine that writing under the keen watchful eye of a communist state made Selimovi' resort to this tactic. Selimovi'c is also an exceptional stylist. You can find remarkable and insightful sentences on almost every page of the book. Also, almost all of the dialogues have a deep philosophical undertone to them. Selimovic''s insights into human psyche are uncanny, and the lessons that he draws from them are timeless. Perhaps the most famous of his insights is the claim, put into the mouth of one of the protagonists, that there are three major vices that we are tempted towards: alcohol, gambling and power. While we can overcome the first two, the last one is unconquerable.

The main struggle that Ahmet is engaged in is not with his opponents who make his life extremely difficult. It is rather an internal struggle between accepting one of the two opposing worldviews: a fatalist one where the life's events are so far outside one's control that is meaningless to take any personal initiative, and a much more individualist worldview that affirms the value of an individual and supports the notion that our individual strivings have a meaning and a positive effect on our lives.

The fortress from the title is the motif that acquires many different meanings throughout the book. It is a physical place that is instrumental to the plot, but it also represents several different life circumstances and states of mind. Selimovi' adroitly exploits all of these multiple meanings, and effortlessly shuffles between them without the danger of overusing the metaphor.

This is one of two Selimovic''s great works and in every respect as good as "The Death and the Dervish." It needs to be read by anyone who wants to get a better understanding of the life, relationships, and the historical circumstances that have shaped Bosnia through the centuries. The book also cements Selimovi''s place as one of the great World writers of the twentieth century.

I have alredy read Dervis and Death from the same author. I love the writer's style, the lightness in presenting his thoughts and inside struggle and how devoted one can be to following the truth and principles whilst trying to preserve the dignity in most difficult circumstances.