Set in the provincial town of Travnik, then part of the Ottoman Empire, Bosnian Chronicle tells of the struggle for supremacy in a region that stubbornly refuses to submit to any outsider. The era is Napoleonic and the novel, both in its historical scope and in its psychological subtlety, is Tolstoyan. Told from the viewpoint of the French consul, a rationalist who struggles to make sense of Balkan life, the novel presents Ottoman viziers, foreign visitors and Austrian plenipotentiaries, all consumed by an endless game of diplomacy and double-dealing. Courtly and expansive face-to-face, they brood and scheme behind closed doors. As they have for centuries, the Bosnians themselves observe and endure the machinations of the greater powers that vie, futilely, to absorb them. Ivo Andric's masterwork is imbued with the richness and complexity of a region that has brought so much tragedy to our century and known so little peace.