The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Galloway, Steven. The Cellist of Sarajevo. Riverhead Books, 2008.

The Cellist of Sarajevo takes place in Sarajevo, national capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The actual siege of Sarajevo occurred between April 5, 1992, until February 29, 1996, but Galloway’s novel takes place over the course of only a few weeks at an unspecified time in the course of the history of the siege. It is narrated in the third person and follows the perspectives of four characters: the cellist, Galloways’ titular character; Arrow, a young military woman; Kenan, a young father and husband; and Dragan, an old bakery worker who is alone in the city. It is about the struggle to defend humanity and hope in wartime.

Section 1 of the novel sets the tone of bleakness, despair, suffering, and pain in the midst of wartime. Galloway’s titular character, the cellist of Sarajevo, decides to play his cello at a marketplace in the city where twenty-two people died in a bombing. For twenty-two days, he vows to play, come what danger may; a day for each person who died. Arrow, who will come to have the most intimate relationship with the cellist, is by far the most tortured character. She lost her father, is alone in the city, and refuses to go by her real name because she feels the woman she was before the war cannot exist in the waitron city. Struggling to live in a city of violence and hopelessness, Arrow’s character is perhaps the most hardened by the war.

Section 2 of the novel begins with Arrow’s mission from her commander: defend the cellist from the men on the hills who want to kill him—and, by extension, kill the hope of the city. Upon hearing his music, Arrow vows to defend what she believes is the last beautiful thing in Sarajevo. Her humanity is awakened; Galloway sets about the rest of the novel developing it and leading Arrow to deeper self-knowledge than she herself thought possible. At the same time, Dragan, the only character who is as embittered as Arrow, runs into his old friend Emina on the street. He feels her joy of life in wartime to be both offensive and a reproach to his own bitterness. As the novel progresses, Galloway will show how both Dragan and Arrow are brought into communion with a sense of transcendent humanity that makes life worth living, via Emina and the cellist.

Section 3 shows Kenan’s perspective to be in dramatic juxtaposition with both Dragan’s and Arrow’s. Rather than allowing the war to harden him, Kenan has become a cowering man, ashamed of his fear and terrified that something will happen to himself or his family, making a happy future impossible. Kenan’s journey to transcendent humanity will not be one that makes him more vulnerable, but rather, one that makes him more courageous. At the same time, Galloway shows Arrow defending the cellist from the man sent to kill him from the hills—but her newfound sense of humanity tortures her as she does it. This section ends with the climax of the book—Arrow shooting the cellist’s would-be assassin—while emphasizing the persistent strength of transcendent human empathy.

Section 4 Kenan being sickened by his own sense of cowardice, making his way to the brewery and cowering at each dilapidated building he passes, his heart breaking and spirit dying at every turn. Dragan a new resolve as he watches Emina be shot and injured by a sniper on the hills: he realizes that if she can value life despite its many horrors, then so can he. Galloway focuses on the development of both Kenan and Dragan in this section, but arrow must face new horror as Nermin is killed in an explosion and she is forced to report to a new commander.

Section 5 shows Kenan reaching a breaking point, becoming so sick of his own cowardice that he tries—and fails—to assault a corrupt profiteer of the war. Though he fails in his attempt to hurt the man, the music of the cellist gives him the resolve and courage he needs to survive nobly for the sake of Sarajevo’s future. Dragan’s resolve manifests in action as he resolves to not make Sarajevo any worse than it already is. The novel ends with Arrow making a decision similar to Dragan’s, refusing to obey the evil orders of Colonel Karaman and paying the price of her life for it. Before she is shot by her killers, Arrow announces her true name, symbolically reclaiming the identity that has been lost by all Galloway’s protagonists in the horror of war.