Montenegro: A Novel

by Starling Lawrence

Book Overview

In 1908, with world war a dark prophecy on the horizon, an English traveler, Auberon Harwell, enters a far valley in Montenegro -- a spy sent to assess the political situation while posing as a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060828420
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Untangling Balkan politics and English romance

Lawrence has written a brilliant novel full of history, politics and romance. The reader will care about the characters and shudder at the foreshadowing of Balkan conflicts. The prose is rich and with many exquisite description of human emotions and natural phenomna. I am only sorry that Lawrence does not have string of novels to his credit. I would surely read him again.

Enchanting

One of the best book I've read this year. Couldn't put it down; just had to know the end.Great writing.

Wonderfully Evocative

Lawrence has done his homework. The scene is 1908, just before three successive wars sweep through the Balkans. It is a time of palpable tension between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, between Serb and Muslim families on the ground. It is a time of great change in Montenegro. Auberon Harwell, a young British botanist stumbles into the mountains and becomes a catalyst for events great and small. He witnesses both the unstable dance of dying empires and the clash of generations as Toma, the Serb boy, is caught between his nationalist father and his mother who will sacrifice anything to spirit her son away from an early Balkan death. The book's greatest achievement is its detailed eye for the terrain, the people, and the atmosphere of Montenegro. It is a wonderfully evocative diary, a slice of Balkan life that rings true.

A Public Service Repackaged as Sweet Historical Romance

What Auberon Harwell's Montenegrin odyssey does best of all is introduce the fortunate reader to the convolutions of Balkan politics, circa 1908 (or 1992 or 1998). History resonates deeply thoughout Harwell's encounters with the variety of Balkan types. After a few pithy exchanges like, "Where is Serbia?" "Whereever Serbians live," contemporary events begin to drop clearly into place. Rich characterizations, authentic locales and landscapes, dense, almost anthropological observations, and the most chaste of romantic entanglements make this a rewarding, agreeably languorous, novel.

Lawrence's MONTENEGRO proves that the past is prologue

The story of Auberon Harwell's gradual involvement with a country to which he is a stanger proves that fiction can be and, in this case, is, a metaphor for history. It is also a very timely novel, for the pre World War I Austria which he describes can be seen as an echo of the current Western debate surrounding the former Yugoslavia. Also, Lawrence gives a balanced historical context for understanding the soul, character and motivation of the Serbs. His lyrical prose captures the essence of the land and the ties of the people to that land in such a way that we can begin to understand the deep nature of the complexities of geopolitical motivations. Also, as the daughter of a Montenegrin exile, this book brought me closer to my own father's story and my own history. Who should we send to mediate the "Balkan problem"? Starling Lawrence!