Dervish and Death | Death and the Dervish (Writings from an Unbound Europe)

Heavy going | Death and the Dervish (Writings from an Unbound Europe) | Mesa Selimovic

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	• Death and the Dervish (Writings from an Unbound Europe) Mesa Selimovic Northwestern University Press, 1996 - 473 pages average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Nobel worthy . . .

The rich psychological density of this novel captures well the complexities and paradoxes at the heart of human experience. For 455 pages the reader is immersed (I want to say imprisoned) in the twists and turns of one man's awareness of himself and the world around him. While it's a small world, maybe 17th-century Sarajevo, it is also under the heavy-handed governance of far-off Constantinople during the Ottoman Empire. A reader familiar with the political realities of the time when the novel was written can immediately see it as an allegory of life in Soviet-era Yugoslavia. The dominant theme from beginning to end is a state of anxiety, and one thinks of similar anxious and fearful moods captured in the compositions of the author's contemporary, Shostakovich.

Yet there's a universality that readers from any culture can recognize and identify with. The novel's narrator, Sheikh Ahmed, is tormented by his emotional conflicts, and much of his account of himself reads like Edgar Allan Poe. Like the humans we know ourselves to be, he behaves well at times and unforgivably at others. The morally right course of action is often clouded and undermined by self-interest, so that our estimation of him varies sometimes from one paragraph to the next. The more admirable character in the novel is his friend Hassan, who represents a good-heartedness and depth of character based more on folk wisdom than the dictates of religious belief.

Still, the novel wavers between folk wisdom (which can easily yield to mob violence and other forms of depravity, as the novel illustrates) and a moral code as provided by religious faith and transcribed in scriptural texts like the Koran (which can be misused for ignoble ends as the novel also illustrates). Selimovich addresses the central moral issue of any time and place - the great difficulty of choosing the right course of action when the consequences of that action are impossible to predict and potentially perilous. This is a fine novel that wants to be read slowly and thoughtfully. It may be set in Bosnia, but it is about everyone.

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Dervish and Death

Mesa Selimovic was a great writer and it's a pitty that he didn't win the Nobel Prize (to my knowledge, he was never even considered). A talent like his is rare. "Dervish and Death" is a book I enjoyed reading very much, for the first time, and each time afterwards I enjoyed it even more. Unfortunatelly, this is not the case with all of Selimovic's works, as some of them are, to put it plainly, boring.
What captivated me about "Dervish..." is Selimovic's sentence, which is so melodic that it almost seems like poetry.
This is a demanding book and not the easiest read in the world. Even though it is a simple story, it takes time and it must be consumed slowly. Recommended but only if you have a lot of time on your hands.

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Heavy going

A book I can say I really enjoyed (once I had finished) but I have to say it was HEAVY GOING! The author has the habit of many Eastern European writers in that he likes to go into the most minute detail of his characters which at times is quite pleasant in that it gives you a more detailed picture in your mind of the times he is writing about but at others makes you want to scream out GET ON WITH IT!!! Which is how I felt for the first 40 odd pages of this book after which it does start to get interesting. The character of the dervish is something of a reflection of the author whose own brother was executed by the authorities and he like the dervish in the book failed to to all that he could to prevent his execution. At times you sympathise with the character but at others he can disgust you with his inaction and lack of determination. His encounters with the Islamic judges of the town are wonderful and really give you a picture of life in Ottoman Bosnia and the corruption that had infected (some) of its officials although the author could equally be talking about the Yugoslavia in which he lived in.

I must say I read this book mostly because I was interested in Ottoman history and I seriously doubt that had I not such a strong interest in Ottoman history that I would have finished this book.

This book stands as one of the few translations of Bosnian literature in the English language and though it is an excellent book it can also be a tiresome book.

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A rare example of a true Masterpiece.

The word masterpiece is too often used for all kinds of material that barely rises above the level of mediocrity. Selimovich is a master of the craft, and this is his great work. As simple as that. It should be apparent to those with a sense of literary merit from the first pages that this is an exceptional piece of writing. If however you don't like challenges I'd recommend lighter fare. Selimovich is intense to a point almost unbearable at times. The book is as internal as they come, but the narrative does move, and the characters that intrude on the tortured protagonist's awareness are well drawn. Which is an understatement. The penetration we get into diverse mentalities and the rendering of their physicality, awe the reader. If you are a writer this is an essential book. This is true for anyone who believes in the art of the novel. This will serve as an example of the highest order.

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A classic

The Publishers Weekly editorial review says that this book "was a bestseller when published in Yugoslavia in 1966, but it seems probable that its popularity lay more in its portrayal of a Yugoslavia oppressed than in any intrinsic artistry", but the other reviewers are right to emphasize the universality of this book. The Muslim or Bosnian elements of the setting are purely accidental. The depth of the psychological portrait of the narrator is worthy of Dostoevsky, and the almost surreal sense of alienation and frustration in dealing with a justice system that has no real connection with its ostensible purpose is reminiscent of Kafka. This book deserves to be known as one of the great works of 20th century European literature.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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