Screenwriter Angus MacPhail, who wrote several screenplays for Alfred Hitchcock is credited with the term “MacGuffin.” A MacGuffin is the device which drives the plot but is unimportant by itself to the movie or book.
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR. The book is “The Cellist of Sarajevo” by Stephen Galloway.As I looked up the Bosnian War and the Balkans and Yugoslavia, I kept seeing the word “diverse” to describe the population of the area. Yes, diverse, but at each other’s throats.
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR. The book is “The Cellist of Sarajevo” by Stephen Galloway.Stephen Galloway’s take off on the Vaso Miskin massacre in Sarajevo on the 27th of May 1992 is not about the worst of the massacres and killings in the Bosnian war.
Stephen Galloway’s driver for his novel is the bravery of a lone musician who defies the snipers and shells to play the cello in memory of the dead. Based on a real musician, 35-year-old cellist Vedran Smailovic, it was not the first time that music has defied war, or disaster, nor the last.
As the United States expanded in the 1800’s, communication needs also expanded. Mail service was social media. People would write to tell relatives where they were and what they were doing. So, when Facebook’s subject line entices us with “Mamie Smith was in Hays …..” the line is far from new.