Unearthly Expression of His Hands

Unearthly Expression of His Hands tells the story about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. It builds the argument that the murder of Franz Ferdinand is the result of the modernization and enlightenment that Habsburg authorities carried out in Bosnia. Gavrilo Princip, Nedeljko Čabrinović and other comrades were true children of the epoch, educated on 19th century novel, poetry of Walt Whitman, Russian anarchists and assassins. Vienna educated them and gave them the opportunity to conquer and fulfill their illusions. Bosnia and the Western Balkans have never been more European and closer to Vienna, Berlin and Paris than at the moment before the Gavrilo Princip took the fatal shot.

Miljenko Jergović wrote a novel and a preparation for the novel at the same time. Unearthly Expression of His Hands is a documentary text, written in a manner of other great documentary texts, that was supposed to be foundation for building a great fiction. But is it? Is this all true, or is it a fictional story, a youth adventure novel with sad ending?

Unearthly Expression of His Hands is one of those books that makes every reader return to it over and over again, that makes you think and ask questions; it is the book that approaches the history of this region without any ideological burden. It tries to understand and illuminate one particular era and with the help of fiction it tries to bring to life people and events that possibly determined our fate and fate of the continent.

"Speculations about possible streams of history are meaningful only if they lead us to a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of this one flow of history that came into being. In order for this to happen, life must be seen in a vast totality. And that was what Miljenko Jergović did in book Unearthly Expression of His Hands. It is not my intention to write a review, but in this time when this region is under threat of history repeating itself, I point to the importance of this study, which can be read as sketch for the novel, as a treatise, as an essay, and ... and it is a book that you read in one sitting!"- Dragan Velikić

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