An NU Press Title
9/1/1999
Northwestern
4 3/4 x 8, 406 pp.
Trade Paper
ISBN 0-8101-1713-4 / $21.95
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Fortress, The
Mesa Selimovic
The Fortress is one of the most significant and fascinating novels to come out of the former Yugoslavia. Ahmet Shabo returns home to eighteenth-century Sarajevo from the war in Russia, numbed by the death in battle or suicide of nearly his entire military unit. In time he overcomes the anguish of war, only to find that he has emerged a reflective and contemplative man in a society that does not value, and will not tolerate, the subversive implications of these qualities.
"The Fortress is a chilling, Kafkaesque tale of baffling, inescapable persecution that evokes Camus's The Stranger and Sartre's No Exit." --Washington Post Book World
"In disturbing echoes of the present day, Ahmet Shabo rehearses issues we live with now, in our apparently distant, transformed world, their somber litany a fitting testament to his creator's prescience." --Review of Contemporary Fiction
"One of the most significant novels to come out of the former Yugoslavia. Profound in its evocation of Bosnian history...Selimovic's subtle and complex characterization, his vivid evocation of the political and social framework of a historical moment and its associations with modern Yugoslavian history, and the insight of his moral and philosophical explorations all contribute to the book's dark power."--Translation Review
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