The Bridge on the Drina

Ivo Andric’s novel The Bridge on the Drina is a fictionalized history of life on and around the famous bridge in the town of Visegrad, Bosnia (near the Serbian border, and formerly part of Yugoslavia/Austria) over a period of about 300 years. The result is a minor Balkan masterpiece, full of interesting characters and dramas, and with extraordinary insights into the region’s contentious politics and violent history. And Andric's prose has a wise and inclusive tone throughout:

Every human generation has its own illusions with regard to civilization; some believe they are taking part in its upsurge, others that they are witnesses of its extinction.  In fact, it always both flames and smolders and is extinguished, according to the place and the angle of view.

Andric won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961 in large part for this novel.