num_pages: 221
description: Gospoica (The Woman from Sarajevo) by Andri was originally published in 1945. and is one of the three novels that make up the Bosnian Trilogy. The other two are Bosnian Chronicle and The Bridge on the Drina. The novel is set in the cities of Sarajevo and Belgrade during the first three decades of this century. The places and time are not incidentally chosen. Ivo Andri is from Bosnia and knows the people and their problems in this unique area. The theme and composition suggest a work of modern classicism. It is the tragic life of a woman disappointed in people and in the world she lives in. She is completely enslaved by money in which she hopes to find security and revenge in a hateful and insecure world. At the same time she is literally and feverishly following her bankrupt fathers last plea as she becomes not only thrifty but a real miser in a classical Gogolian style. This novel is dominated by a single character a spinster named Miss Raika Radakovi who is dominated by a single passion stinginess. The development of this passion is traced through the first third of this century from the time Miss Raikas dying father a ruined merchant solemnly enjoins his school-girl-daughter to guard with her life the little property he can leave her until some thirty-five years later when she herself dies a scrawny old woman unloved and unlovable but faithful to her trust. As a moneylender she parlays small insurance legacy after her father into a small fortune. But whatever her wealth at any time she will spend none of it on herself. For this single-minded greed for money she puts everything else out of her life  love friendship concern for other people. Raika also speculates in currencies during the tumultuous years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the uncertain emergence of the new Yugoslav state. A good deal of the power of Andris tale comes through the depiction of this seething historical background in whose torrent the wretched Raikas life is washed along like a piece of flotsam. The novel is carefully thought out and fully imagined with solid passages of description in the nineteenth-century manner and scrupulous attentions to the job of relating the individual life to the broader pattern of social and economical change. With brilliant economy Andri sketches the stages through which Miss Raika hoards and increases her inheritance: Sarajevo in the era of provincial usury the economic upheavals and disintegration of the First World War staid Belgrade headily embarking on the jazz age when the war is over the pinched depression years during which Miss Raika dies. The requisite drama  the testing of the ruling passion  is present in the form of a young man whose physical resemblance to a beloved uncle long dead touches Miss Raikas heart enough to make her swerve though only momentarily from her objective of never parting with her money. The chronicle is Andris favorite form and this novel is no exception a highly poetic form depicting the past and the present in a meticulous artistic and philosophical manner. Detailed historical analysis serves as a chain and always gives a basis for philosophical interpretation.
language: None
title: Gospođica
publisher: Dereta