SOURCE: "The Little Men in 'Bar Titanic'," in Ivo Andrić: A Critical Biography, McFarland & Company, 1990, pp. 123-30.

In the following essay, Mukerji perceives "Bar Titanic'" as Andrić's commentary on Nazi atrocities during World War II

Pieced together from coarse slices of Bosnian life, the grim realities of the Nazi offensive and the Independent State of Croatia (in which Bosnia-Hercegovina was included), Andrić's "Bar 'Titanic'" is an arresting story. Its protagonists are representative of different species of victims and tormentors: Jew and Ustasha together contribute the ironic nuances of a Yugoslav tragedy in a Sarajevo bar.

Mento Papo's misnamed 'Titanic' on the fringe of the city is part of a two-storied house to which "a poverty without charm and picturesqueness" (page 194) clings. An architectural hybrid of Central European and Near Eastern styles conspicuous in local buildings erected in the 1890s, it suggests "a life without thought and...