Raincoast Books
Available: 07/13/06
5.25 x 8 · 224 pages
978-1-55192-959-0
CDN $29.95 · cl

Canadian Title

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Drina Bridge

A Novel

Jim Bartley

Drina Bridge is a beautifully told story of faith and loss during the 1993 Serbian-Bosnian conflict. Recovering from his lover Pimm’s death, Chris travels to Yugoslavia with Pimm’s faded birth papers, hoping to uncover his past. He’s led to a monastery in a Western Serbian town. Just beyond the border, in Bosnia, brutal war rages.

Meanwhile, Slobodan Kusic, a 60-year-old refugee raised in Bosnia and Serbia, is a patient in a Sarajevo hospital. Scarred and embittered, he types his memoir. Chris learns of this manuscript—a fascinating portal into Yugoslavia’s labyrinth and a possible clue to Pimm’s past.

Chris’ time in Serbia stretches into a three-year personal and spiritual journey involving an illicit love affair, a link to Slobodan’s childhood and a harrowing trip into Bosnia.

Drina Bridge is a remarkable story of suffering, and of the limits of human cruelty and endurance seen through the eyes of two different men, each seeking peace in a landscape of war.

Jim Bartley (Toronto) is the First Fiction reviewer for the Globe and Mail and a playwright with four full-length plays produced and one published (Stephen and Mister Wilde) to critical acclaim. He travelled to Yugoslavia in 1991 and subsequently to Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia.