Book Review: Omer Pasha Latas
By Elizabeth Suggs
Omer Pasha Latas by Nobel Prize winner Ivo Andrić is set during nineteenth-century Sarajevo, a place where both Muslims and Christians live, harboring uneasy feelings toward one another and resentment for the Ottoman rule.
While I didn’t find a common plot in this story, other than the actions of Omer and his troops, I found the story quite engaging. This book is about characters, rather than plot, which fit perfectly.
For instance, Andrić's most prominent character is Omer Pasha Latas, a sexual deviant and a turncoat. This quote sums up how horrible Omer Pasha Latas was to Bosnia and the Ottoman Empire as a whole: Yes, killing and lechery! Because everything in this house is infected with foul, profane lechery: timber and stone and every last rag; bread and water and air are infected with it; and lechery kills, it must kill, for it’s the same as death, unnatural, shameful. Gossip is the order of the day: an invisible web of intrigue, slander, whispering, and, particularly malicious gossip was constantly being woven, tangled, untangled, and woven anew.
But Andrić doesn’t stop there. Another haunting picture is of a man only briefly mentioned. It is Osman, the town fool. He went crazy for never finding his love, a stranger.
Then there’s my favorite character of them all: Saida Hanuma, a character well ahead of her time. Saida Hanuma is a refreshing take on women. Andrić is one of the only male writers of his time (I know of) who actually gives women a three-dimensional image.
Saida Hanuma is strong and clever, yet too trusting. It's with this trusting she falls into traps. She is quite possibly one of my favorite female characters of all time. Here are two quotes that really explain what she went through:
As though it had a hundred paws, it was tearing through the thick branches in which she was hidden, breaking them, maddened by the desire to reach her, naked and defenseless, to tell her to pieces and devour her.
These men would never grasp the simple truth that the female being sitting before then, attracting them so irresistibly, was not here for them, and was not merely what they saw and desired: she was a whole, complex person, with specific characteristics and needs, and her own soul, at the end of the day. No one asked her what she thought and felt, what she believed, what she expected from life, they simply stretched out their hands toward her throat and waist, as if drowning.
Andrić’s novel is well worth the read. It exposes readers to a classical world not often taught in history classes (at least the classes I took in high school or college). It is the other side of the world. The world of the Ottomans and their power. This power destroyed lives and towns. It was unstoppable.
More quotes I loved:
They drink anything that intoxicates, fuddles the mind, anything that silences memories, clouds the present and conjures a better future, anything that can at least for a moment alter the image of the real world, which was for them insupportable.
Your ever stronger heartbeats merge into a single one. Your breath is stilled, your eyes dimmed by the golden clouds through which you are flying. This is not a journey, nor is it escape, but miraculous salvation at a moment when it seemed that everything had come to an end and there was no hope. Something beyond all probability is happening, the opposite of the obvious.
They tried everything: loosening the chain, or making it hot, or holding it in their hands.
Even angels would be corrupted by these idlers and perverts.
He never would have done that in a decent country, among other people. But here, here even a lamb of God would turn into a lynx, a tiger.
Everyone should learn about this. I highly suggest this!
Elizabeth Suggs is the owner and founder of Editing Mee and co-owner of Collective Tales Publishing. When she’s not writing or editing, she loves to dive deep into books (the weirder, the better!), and she loves to take random long walks to unplanned destinations. Check out her recently released book Collective Darkness with eleven other authors. Buy your copy here: www.CollectiveDarkness.com