The suspended world of Sarajevo between life and death: the return of Gigi Riva 30 years after the war

A return, thirty years later, to measure what remains: of the people, of the city, of themselves. ‘There was love in Sarajevo by Gigi Riva (Mondadori, 228 pp) and a novel that intertwines autobiography and fiction to tell not so much the death of war, but the life that resists within it.

The protagonist, Carlo, reporter scarred by the siege of Sarajevo, receives a message calling him back to the Bosnian capital for the anniversary of the end of hostilities. From here a physical and interior journey unfolds that spans three decades and three returns, in which the city becomes both a real place and a “city of the soul”, a measure of the good and evil of the world.

Riva, among the Italian journalists who covered the dissolution of Yugoslavia the most – from special correspondent of “Il Giorno” followed all the Balkan wars of the nineties – builds a choral narrative, populated by memorable figures – friends, artists, intellectuals, survivors – who embody the parable of Sarajevo: from a cosmopolitan symbol to a space marked by fractures, disillusionment and new social balances.

The heart of the book is in the reversed look at the war. Not the horror itself, but the vital tension that explodes in extreme conditions: solidarity, friendship, desire, even love. It is the dualism between eros and thanatos that runs through the entire story, the key to understanding the Sarajevo experience.

A narrative memory, dense and reflective, in which everyday details – a bar, a journey, a gesture – become a symbol. It emerges and becomes recurring throughout the over 220 pages the contrast between the “during”experienced as a time of intensity and community, and the “after”, marked by a sense of emptiness, of impoverished normality and nostalgia for a past which, although tragic, appears more authentic.

A novel that is also a historical and human balance sheet: Sarajevo as a laboratory of European contradictions, yesterday and today. It is no coincidence that Riva explicitly recalls analogies with contemporary conflicts, from Ukraine to Gaza, giving the book a strong relevance again. The story evokes ‘human safaris’, recalling among the protagonists and witnesses the evil of which man is capable and extends to a reflection on what Europe can do to withstand the comparison between the great powers: a Europe in which the Balkans are still waiting for full integration, paying for the delay of a ruling class not yet ready to be great.