Ivo Andrić-The Damned Yard

Answer 1

The novel is written in 1954. Cjamil, a wealthy young man of Smyrna living in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, is fascinated by the story of Dzem, ill-fated brother of the Sultan Bajazit, who ruled Turkey in the fifteenth century. Cjamil, in his isolation, comes to believe that he is Dzem, and that he shares his evil destiny: he is born to be a victim of the State. Because of his stories about Dzem's ambitions to overthrow his brother, Cjamil is arrested under suspicion of plotting against the Sultan. He is taken to a prison in Istanbul, where he tells his story, to Petar, a monk.

Out of these exotic materials, Andric has constructed a book of great clarity, brevity and interest. No doubt it will be read by some as a political parable about the tyranny of the State, but also as a quite simply story about ill-fortune and human misunderstanding, fear and ignorance. Dzem and Cjamil are doomed - and the certainty of their persecution is sometimes relieved, sometimes intensified by the stupidity and fright of the people who cross their ill-starred lives.