The Cellist of Sarajevo Lesson Plan

The Cellist of Sarajevo is a 2008 novel by Stephen Galloway. The story is set during the Siege of Sarajevo in the three-year Bosnian War which lasted from 1992 to 1995. Though, for the sake of the novel, the events have been compressed into a month. The novel was inspired by a set of real events that took place during the siege. On May 27th, 1992, mortal shells killed twenty-two people waiting in line to buy bread. For the next twenty-two days, renowned cellist Vedran Smailović played Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor at the site to honor those who had been killed. While Galloway's character of the cellist in the novel is not based on Smailović, it is Smailović's actions that inspired the...