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Death in the Museum of Modern Art
A tender and revealing set of stories by the uniquely delicate Bosnian writer, Alma Lazarevska. Avoiding the easy traps of politics and blame, she reveals a world full of incidents and worries so similar to our own, and yet always under the shadow of the snipers. One of the finest works to have emerged from the tragedy of the siege of Sarajevo.
84 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1996
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About the author
Alma Lazarevska
4 books3 followersAlma Lazarevska je savremena bosanskohercegovačka spisateljica i publicistkinja. Rođena je 9. marta 1957. godine u Velesu, Makedonija. Osnovnu školu, gimnaziju i Filozofski fakultet (odsjek Komparativna književnost i teatrologija) završila je u Sarajevu. Živi u Sarajevu. Piše i objavljuje od 1981. godine. Piše narativnu prozu, eseje, kolumne.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 4, 2019
в одному з оповідань альми лазаревської пара сидить на кухні в обложеному місті та при свічці відповідає на запитання анкети, яку глянцевий журнал прислав ста особам із обложеного міста, щоб потім за її підсумками видати спеціальний номер і влаштувати виставку в нью-йоркському музеї сучасного мистецтва: що таке щастя, чого ви боїтеся, де б ви хотіли жити. як би ви хотіли померти.
як би ви хотли померти, запитує мешканців обложеного міста анкета, яку потім треба вкласти в рожевий конверт і послати за межі міста. і вся сотня анкет дійде до адресата, не думайте, ми ж живемо в цивілізованому світі наприкінці двадцятого століття, чому б їй не дійти.
мені не вдалося знайти на сайті музею сучасного мистецтва такої виставки, тож імовірно, що альма лазаревська її вигадала (все-таки це художні оповідання, хай і про дуже реальний досвід). але я й не здавувалась би, якби виявилося, що не вигадала, бо цей проєкт ідеально вклався б у сюрреалістичну ситуацію з облогою сараєва. це взагалі найвиразніше відчуття від текстів лазаревської: усі деталі начебто звичні й майже на місці, та загальна картина – чистісіньке unheimlich.
як би ви хотли померти, запитує мешканців обложеного міста анкета, яку потім треба вкласти в рожевий конверт і послати за межі міста. і вся сотня анкет дійде до адресата, не думайте, ми ж живемо в цивілізованому світі наприкінці двадцятого століття, чому б їй не дійти.
мені не вдалося знайти на сайті музею сучасного мистецтва такої виставки, тож імовірно, що альма лазаревська її вигадала (все-таки це художні оповідання, хай і про дуже реальний досвід). але я й не здавувалась би, якби виявилося, що не вигадала, бо цей проєкт ідеально вклався б у сюрреалістичну ситуацію з облогою сараєва. це взагалі найвиразніше відчуття від текстів лазаревської: усі деталі начебто звичні й майже на місці, та загальна картина – чистісіньке unheimlich.
August 15, 2021
Alma Lazarevska's 'Death in the Museum of Modern Art' is a collection of short stories. It has six stories. They are all set during the siege of Sarajevo, though the stories don't mention the city by name. Most of the stories are narrated in the first person, and the narrator seems to be a literary version of the author.
I loved most of the stories in the collection. In most of the stories the narrator describes everyday scenes in her life and how they change suddenly after the siege starts and the first shells start falling in the city, and things like sugar, matches, bread and even water become hard to get. Alma Lazarevska's prose is soft and gentle and reading the narrator telling her story is like listening to our favourite aunt sharing her experiences while sipping a cup of hot tea, while we are sitting in front of the fire in winter listening to her. I loved listening to Alma Lazarevska's voice through the voice of the narrator. At some point, I stopped thinking about the story (the stories were beautiful, poetic, and haunting) but just continued reading for the narrator's gentle and wise voice. Someone said this about Alma Lazarevska's books – "There are books about which one talks and there are books with which one talks—Alma Lazarevska's book is of the latter kind." I felt exactly that, when I read this book.
I loved Alma Lazarevska's 'Death in the Museum of Modern Art'. Her work is hard to come by in English translation. There are one or two stories by her in online literary journals. None of her other works have been translated. She has a slim backlist – just one more short story collection, a novel and a collection of essays. Hope they get translated into English. I wish she had written more. There is an interview with her online in which she talks about how she started writing, her literary influences, her favourite writers, her city of Sarajevo, about Bosnian literature and other things. When we read the interview, we feel that we are in the presence of a gentle soul. There was one particular thing she said in the interview, which went like this –
"In my tongue Ivo Andrić is the undisputed master of language. The precision and the beauty of Andrić's language are fascinating. In a biographical note for my English-language publisher I pointed out that I was born on the 9th of March, the same day as Bobby Fischer. To use chess terminology, I would like to be at least a pawn in a language in which Andrić is the king."
This is the kind of thing that a contemporary writer will rarely say. Alma Lazarevska's humility is inspiring and her love for Ivo Andrić's prose is infectious.
I'll leave you with two of my favourite passages from the book.
From 'The Secret of Kasper Hauser'
"But, life was still order that had not yet begun to disintegrate. It lay in drawers with folded white bed linen and little bags of dried lavender. It was still all-of-a-piece, even if it was sometimes disrupted in the morning by the disagreeable sound of the alarm-clock. On one such morning the north-facing room acquired a new secret. I woke up before dawn in order to take an antibiotic. Replacing the bottle from which I had tipped a red and yellow tablet onto my hand, I caught sight of a bright, swaying blot that I had never seen in this room before. It was trembling on the spine of the large book I had been reading the previous evening. That is how I discovered that in the early morning a little ray of sunlight manages to penetrate into the room that faces north...We wake up too late or else that rare ray of sunlight penetrates into our room too early...The green book with silver letters was lying over there, and on its spine was that trembling blot of light I had seen once before. If I was quick and quiet, perhaps I’d catch it. I know that light is not sensitive to touch or sound. But still, I edged towards it as though it were a live butterfly. I lowered my hand onto the spine of the green book and now the blot was trembling on the back of my hand, like a transparent, asymmetric butterfly."
From 'How We Killed the Sailor'
"The room had lost its box-shape. The light of the thin candle didn’t reach its corners. It created a dim, uneven oval that shifted lazily if an unexpected current of air happened to touch its tiny wick. There was a transparent, trembling film over us. The few objects that were bathed in dim light, and the two of us, made up the inside of a giant amoeba. We were its organs, pulsating in the same rhythm, but not touching."
I loved Alma Lazarevska's short story collection. Hope more of her work gets translated into English. I'd love to read them.
Have you read 'Death in the Museum of Modern Art'? What do you think about it?
I loved most of the stories in the collection. In most of the stories the narrator describes everyday scenes in her life and how they change suddenly after the siege starts and the first shells start falling in the city, and things like sugar, matches, bread and even water become hard to get. Alma Lazarevska's prose is soft and gentle and reading the narrator telling her story is like listening to our favourite aunt sharing her experiences while sipping a cup of hot tea, while we are sitting in front of the fire in winter listening to her. I loved listening to Alma Lazarevska's voice through the voice of the narrator. At some point, I stopped thinking about the story (the stories were beautiful, poetic, and haunting) but just continued reading for the narrator's gentle and wise voice. Someone said this about Alma Lazarevska's books – "There are books about which one talks and there are books with which one talks—Alma Lazarevska's book is of the latter kind." I felt exactly that, when I read this book.
I loved Alma Lazarevska's 'Death in the Museum of Modern Art'. Her work is hard to come by in English translation. There are one or two stories by her in online literary journals. None of her other works have been translated. She has a slim backlist – just one more short story collection, a novel and a collection of essays. Hope they get translated into English. I wish she had written more. There is an interview with her online in which she talks about how she started writing, her literary influences, her favourite writers, her city of Sarajevo, about Bosnian literature and other things. When we read the interview, we feel that we are in the presence of a gentle soul. There was one particular thing she said in the interview, which went like this –
"In my tongue Ivo Andrić is the undisputed master of language. The precision and the beauty of Andrić's language are fascinating. In a biographical note for my English-language publisher I pointed out that I was born on the 9th of March, the same day as Bobby Fischer. To use chess terminology, I would like to be at least a pawn in a language in which Andrić is the king."
This is the kind of thing that a contemporary writer will rarely say. Alma Lazarevska's humility is inspiring and her love for Ivo Andrić's prose is infectious.
I'll leave you with two of my favourite passages from the book.
From 'The Secret of Kasper Hauser'
"But, life was still order that had not yet begun to disintegrate. It lay in drawers with folded white bed linen and little bags of dried lavender. It was still all-of-a-piece, even if it was sometimes disrupted in the morning by the disagreeable sound of the alarm-clock. On one such morning the north-facing room acquired a new secret. I woke up before dawn in order to take an antibiotic. Replacing the bottle from which I had tipped a red and yellow tablet onto my hand, I caught sight of a bright, swaying blot that I had never seen in this room before. It was trembling on the spine of the large book I had been reading the previous evening. That is how I discovered that in the early morning a little ray of sunlight manages to penetrate into the room that faces north...We wake up too late or else that rare ray of sunlight penetrates into our room too early...The green book with silver letters was lying over there, and on its spine was that trembling blot of light I had seen once before. If I was quick and quiet, perhaps I’d catch it. I know that light is not sensitive to touch or sound. But still, I edged towards it as though it were a live butterfly. I lowered my hand onto the spine of the green book and now the blot was trembling on the back of my hand, like a transparent, asymmetric butterfly."
From 'How We Killed the Sailor'
"The room had lost its box-shape. The light of the thin candle didn’t reach its corners. It created a dim, uneven oval that shifted lazily if an unexpected current of air happened to touch its tiny wick. There was a transparent, trembling film over us. The few objects that were bathed in dim light, and the two of us, made up the inside of a giant amoeba. We were its organs, pulsating in the same rhythm, but not touching."
I loved Alma Lazarevska's short story collection. Hope more of her work gets translated into English. I'd love to read them.
Have you read 'Death in the Museum of Modern Art'? What do you think about it?
July 10, 2015
A vital and moving collection of short stories set in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. An exploration of humanity under siege. For full review see: https://roughghosts.wordpress.com/201...
June 30, 2025
country #9: Bosnia & Herzegovina. enjoyed these little snippets of life during the siege of Sarajevo
January 8, 2014
Profoundly moving, highly imaginative and poetic, this captures all the poignant little details of life under siege.
August 16, 2021
The blurber from the Irish Times on the front cover has this to say, and I think it’s true:
"Nothing, not even history itself, prepares the reader for the paralysing beauty of the images that emerge from these stories written by a Bosnian survivor of the siege of Sarajevo."
The first story, ‘Dafna Pehfogl Crosses the Bridge between There and Here’, features the vivid image of Dafna, cursed since birth, poised on the bridge which separates the besieged city from safety with her family on the other side. Although the prose is restrained throughout the collection and there is very little description of the savagery of this siege, the sense of horror is held only in abeyance. The story begins with Dafna’s faith in the arrangements for the prohibited crossing which her family despite their petty cruelties have arranged and then segues to her unhappy birth, her failure with suitors and how the modest book of expectation closed over the girlhood of Dafna Pehfogl and an old maid’s cards were laid out on the table. There is a ghastly inevitability about the finale.
In ‘Greetings from the Besieged City’, a mother reads a story to her child, a routine that is for many of us a normal part of childhood that we maintained for our own children. But this mother, well aware of the fragility of life, changes the ending of a story because she wants to shield her child from the moment when the main character dies. Even though she knows it is futile to try to shield him from the inevitability of grief. There is also some ironic banter about postcards in this story, forcing the reader to imagine the cheery tourist postcards that we’re all familiar with, juxtaposed against the scenes of destruction and death that we saw so often on the television news.
The residents of an apartment block in ‘Thirst in Number Nine’ do not know each other until the day they flee to the cellar on a night when red-hot balls were falling onto the besieged city. The image that sears into the reader’s mind is of the little boy who is thirsty...
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/08/16/d...
"Nothing, not even history itself, prepares the reader for the paralysing beauty of the images that emerge from these stories written by a Bosnian survivor of the siege of Sarajevo."
The first story, ‘Dafna Pehfogl Crosses the Bridge between There and Here’, features the vivid image of Dafna, cursed since birth, poised on the bridge which separates the besieged city from safety with her family on the other side. Although the prose is restrained throughout the collection and there is very little description of the savagery of this siege, the sense of horror is held only in abeyance. The story begins with Dafna’s faith in the arrangements for the prohibited crossing which her family despite their petty cruelties have arranged and then segues to her unhappy birth, her failure with suitors and how the modest book of expectation closed over the girlhood of Dafna Pehfogl and an old maid’s cards were laid out on the table. There is a ghastly inevitability about the finale.
In ‘Greetings from the Besieged City’, a mother reads a story to her child, a routine that is for many of us a normal part of childhood that we maintained for our own children. But this mother, well aware of the fragility of life, changes the ending of a story because she wants to shield her child from the moment when the main character dies. Even though she knows it is futile to try to shield him from the inevitability of grief. There is also some ironic banter about postcards in this story, forcing the reader to imagine the cheery tourist postcards that we’re all familiar with, juxtaposed against the scenes of destruction and death that we saw so often on the television news.
The residents of an apartment block in ‘Thirst in Number Nine’ do not know each other until the day they flee to the cellar on a night when red-hot balls were falling onto the besieged city. The image that sears into the reader’s mind is of the little boy who is thirsty...
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/08/16/d...
April 30, 2022
I found this book accidentally while searching for another one.
I wasn't born yet when Sarajevo was under siege. All that I learned about it was in school but it was brief and I was a kid then who crammed for history lessons to get a good grade. I was oblivious and felt like these kind of tragedies are way behind us.
As I write this, Mariupol in Ukraine is under the siege, surrounded by russian forces. 99% of infrastructure is destroyed, thousands upon thousands of people are dead, those who survive are left in unsanitary conditions and have no access to food or water. I read this book and simultaneously think of what people in Sarajevo went through and what people in Mariupol are going through. My naive adolescent self was wrong, the pain is not left behind.
. . .
'Do they know that there is a besieged city somewhere in the world with the saviours of their souls in it?'
I wasn't born yet when Sarajevo was under siege. All that I learned about it was in school but it was brief and I was a kid then who crammed for history lessons to get a good grade. I was oblivious and felt like these kind of tragedies are way behind us.
As I write this, Mariupol in Ukraine is under the siege, surrounded by russian forces. 99% of infrastructure is destroyed, thousands upon thousands of people are dead, those who survive are left in unsanitary conditions and have no access to food or water. I read this book and simultaneously think of what people in Sarajevo went through and what people in Mariupol are going through. My naive adolescent self was wrong, the pain is not left behind.
. . .
'Do they know that there is a besieged city somewhere in the world with the saviours of their souls in it?'
July 2, 2014
On 3 March 1992, after a referendum for independence from Yugoslavia, held on 29 February and 1 March 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence. A vast majority of the Serbs boycotted the referendum and the Bosnian Serbs, whose strategic goal was to create a new Bosnian Serb State of Republika Sprpska, encircled Sarajevo with a siege force of 13,000 stationed in the surrounding hills.
The City of Sarajevo was under siege from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996, making it the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. During this period the city was assaulted by artillery, mortars, tanks, rocket launchers, aircraft bombs and sniper rifles. The city was officially blockaded from 2 May 1992 and it is estimated that during the four years between 9,502-14,011 people were killed.
Alma Lazarevska is a graduate of the University of Sarajevo, a Bosnian writer and celebrated in her homeland, winning the “Best Book” award from the Society of Writers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for this collection of six short stories, “Death in the Museum of Modern Art”. All of the stories set during the siege and in Sarajevo.
For my full review go to http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/
The City of Sarajevo was under siege from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996, making it the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. During this period the city was assaulted by artillery, mortars, tanks, rocket launchers, aircraft bombs and sniper rifles. The city was officially blockaded from 2 May 1992 and it is estimated that during the four years between 9,502-14,011 people were killed.
Alma Lazarevska is a graduate of the University of Sarajevo, a Bosnian writer and celebrated in her homeland, winning the “Best Book” award from the Society of Writers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for this collection of six short stories, “Death in the Museum of Modern Art”. All of the stories set during the siege and in Sarajevo.
For my full review go to http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/
November 22, 2018
Death in the Museum of Modern Art is a series of short stories set in Sarajevo during the Siege from 1992-1996 after Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia.
It's not really about the siege itself but more its effects on people psychologically. As a result, the narrative is a little unclear and mysterious and has hints of magical realism too. Sometimes that can be a little difficult to follow but mostly I enjoyed it.
Overall, this was another nice random choice, taken to tick the Bosnian author box in my around the world challenge for this year.
It's not really about the siege itself but more its effects on people psychologically. As a result, the narrative is a little unclear and mysterious and has hints of magical realism too. Sometimes that can be a little difficult to follow but mostly I enjoyed it.
Overall, this was another nice random choice, taken to tick the Bosnian author box in my around the world challenge for this year.
December 9, 2015
Short stories set in Bosnia. Worth a look.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews