Ivo Andric's international importance as a major twentieth-century European writer was acknowledged in 1961, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. While most of his works are set in his native Bosnia in specific historical settings, they are both timeless and universal: Bosnia is a microcosm of human society, highlighting its potential for national, cultural, and religious misunderstanding and conflict. All Andric's works are shaped by a wise, balanced, humane philosophy which does not shrink from recognizing brutality in human interaction but is directed toward harmony as a constant, if unattainable, impulse of humanity. Andric's dominant symbol of the bridge stands for this fundamental need to overcome divisions and obstacles, to connect a vision of harmony with fragmented, brutal, hate-ridden reality.

Ivo Andric, the only child of Catholic parents, was born on 9 October 1892 in Travnik, the old center of Ottoman administration in Bosnia. When his father, Ivan...