Original Fiction

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The Cellist of SarajevoSteven Galloway
Snipers in the hills overlook half the intersections in Sarajevo. In the streets below, two inhabitants, Dragan and Kenan, trapped, like all their neighbours, in the city, strive to go about their daily lives, trying to second guess when and where the next bullet will strike. One man, a cellist, defies this game of 'Sarajevo Roulette': in memory of the city's dead, for 22 consecutive days, he becomes a sitting target as he plays Albinoni's 'Adagio' in the street outside his building. Unbeknown to him, one young woman watches his performances with unflinching attention. Tense and heart-wrenching to its last page, The Cellist of Sarajevo shows how life under siege creates agonizing and almost impossible choices.
The children of Innertown exist in a state of suspended terror. Every year or so, a boy from their school disappears, vanishing into the wasteland of the old chemical plant. The town policeman, Morrison, was involved in the cover-up of one boy's murder, and he believes all the boys have been killed. In their fear and frustration, the local boys turn on Rivers, a sad fantasist and suspected paedophile living alone at the edge of the wasteland... A terrifying exploration of loss and the violence that pools under the surface of the everyday, this is an exquisitely written, darkly imagined novel by one of our greatest contemporary writers.