The inhabitants of Sarajevo had good reason for alarm that day in 1850. The Sultan in far off Istanbul was sending his latest seraskier to impose order by whatever means required in this distant part of his Ottoman Empire. This time around, the seraskier arrived with a large well equipped army. Its leader had quelled rebellions in Albania, Syria and Kurdistan already. His mission here was to discipline and bring to heel not the rebellious populace nor an external enemy but those who had ruled Bosnia for centuries and who had until the previous day been called the sultan's sons: the beys, the leaders and members of the most prominent families. ... He was not coming as an authority to rule and manage, but to wage war and punish.

Who was this potentate? His Turkish name was Omer Pasha Latas, and he was a convert to the Muslim faith. The people of Bosnia and Herzegovinia, however, knew that this man who held the highest military office in the sultan's forces was not only a former Christian, but also an Austrian, Micó Latas; a man who had fled that country for Bosnia twenty-five years earlier, then made his way to Turkey. There, through diligence and hard work, he had achieved his current status. These were characteristics to be admired. Yet such a transformation also requires a mastery of deceit to hide away and bury one part of life. In other words, this was a man to be feared.

This idea of a person from two worlds, one who never really fits into either, is a theme to which Andrić returns again and again throughout the book. Unfinished at the time of his death, it is not really a novel, but rather a series of sketches of those around Omer Pasha. Each is not only complete in itself, but also serves to give the reader another piece of the puzzle that is Omer. Each of these characters shares in one way or another that lack of belonging. There is a pervading sense of loneliness in this book, an inability to make human connections, even though some of these very same people are indispensable to the Bosnian foray. The vignette technique highlights this.

Eventually this army too will leave, "... a blessing in this country where pleasure is scarce." Over a hundred years later, Andrić knew this all too well about his country, a place with its own conflicting worlds. Switching from third person narrator to first person as the army finally leaves, he says What counts is that they are leaving, vanishing, disappearing, at least from our country, and we are staying on our own land, to endure, to live out our lives, to eat their bread as well as our own, and to warm ourselves in this sun, which was once also theirs. That is the only victory of which we are capable. And it is our right that we be victorious.