The Bosnian Chronicle is a slow moving novel about a slow moving and very unhappy place where consuls from France and Austria are stationed during the Napoleonic era. Bosnia at the time was ruled by Turkey and shared a hostile border with rebellious Christian Serbs, whose patron was Russia. So this is an historical novel about a facet of the Great Game of major powers being played out in the Balkans, but Bosnia is very much an afterthought in that game, a place where Moslems, Jews, and some Christians live unsettled and contentious lives. The weather is bad, the roads […]