Andrić, Ivo | Vanita Singh Mukerji (essay date 1990)
Vanita Singh Mukerji (essay date 1990)
SOURCE: "The Little Men in 'Bar Titanic'," in Ivo Andrić: A Critical Biography, McFarland & Company, 1990, pp. 123-30.
[In the following essay, Mukerji perceives "Bar Titanic'" as Andrić's commentary on Nazi atrocities during World War II]
Pieced together from coarse slices of Bosnian life, the grim realities of the Nazi offensive and the Independent State of Croatia (in which Bosnia-Hercegovina was included), Andrić's "Bar 'Titanic'" is an arresting story. Its protagonists are representative of different species of victims and tormentors: Jew and Ustasha together contribute the ironic nuances of a Yugoslav tragedy in a Sarajevo bar.
Mento Papo's misnamed 'Titanic' on the fringe of the city is part of a two-storied house to which "a poverty without charm and picturesqueness" (page 194) clings. An architectural hybrid of Central European and Near Eastern styles conspicuous in local buildings...
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