Doboši noći
A novel and study in one, Jergović's portrait of the lost era of Sarajevo from June 1914 to the autumn of 1919, transforming the city into a metaphor for the beauty and horror of the 20th century, full of wars and trauma.
The main character, Josip Gubernik, a Viennese forester and a member of Young Bosnia, comes to Sarajevo to search for an endemic variety of white bird maple in the forests surrounding the city. His search, described in "Diaries of Sarajevo Nights" - a manuscript never found by Timo Ujević - becomes a metaphor for human endeavor in the midst of disaster. Sarajevo, the mythical place where Princip's shot ignited the First World War, becomes the stage for historical horrors: the Balkan wars lead to global carnage, and in the 1990s even worse suffering comes.
"The drums of the night" - a symbol of the city under the "skin" through which humanity plays the bloody music of the 20th century - echo in Gubernik's walks at night, where the beauty of nature and the horror of war mingle. Jergović masterfully draws a duality: the worst thing a person can do to another, but also the beauty without which there is no survival. The novel is an intimate diary of a man and a city, where epochs of violence intersect, and Sarajevo remains persistently beautiful and tragic.
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