Rose of Sarajevo — Book Review
"It's not the fear of death, the hunger, and the deprivation that scares me, it's what people of capable of doing to each other when they are at war".
Nimeta finds her life torn apart just like her nation when the Yugoslavian civil war knocks the doors of Bosnia. One of the lesser known genocides of the world saw the killings of hundreds of thousands of Bosniaks by Serbs and Croats, and caught in this cruel racist and ethnic cleansing madness is Nimeta and her family.
"Rose of Sarajevo" explores the period before the war when all the people lived in harmony and peace without even knowing who was who, and as war engulfs the diplomatically torn nations, it is Bosniaks who have to pay the price of neutrality. Nimeta is a Bosniak journalist who falls in love with a fellow journalist Stefan while she is married to Burhan and has two kids. Living with the guilt of extra-marital affair and the dread of incoming war, she tries to go her own way and follow her heart by telling Burhan the truth, before she could do that Bosnia declares Independence and all hell breaks loose devastating the lives of Bosniaks. Even though this story is built around history and tends to read more like a history book than a fictional book, Ayse Kulin has magnificently crafted the plot which forces the reader to turn the pages of history to read more about Bosnian wars, with characters like Nimeta and Burhan one gets an idea of how lives of ordinary people suffered while the world watched in silence their annihilation. Going through the newsrooms of Nimeta - Ivan, Sonya, Mirsada and Mate - who suffer equally under the mad genocidal plan laid down by evil Milošević. From Sarajevo to Belgrade to Istanbul we experience many tiny fragments of Nimeta and the people who shared her life. A scandalous love affair, a man's thirst to save his country, Stefan's unruly and passionate long lasting infatuation for Nimeta. All this in the backdrop of heartbreaking history makes this book a good and important read.
Historically honest and touching over the themes of feminism and contemporary politics, "Rose of Sarajevo" is a thrilling book which mildly disappoints with the writing but artistically covers the war and lives of people who suffered in that war. This is a book I'd definitely recommend.
