THE FORTRESS

paper 0-8101-1713-4 The Fortress ($59.95; paper $19.95; Sept.; 416 pp.; 0-8101-1712-6; paper 0-8101-1713-4). This long, thoughtful novel by the late Yugoslavian-born author (1910—82) of Death and the Dervish, etc., traces the fate of its narrator, Ahmet Sabo, a Bosnian war veteran who returns home from the Russian front to a family decimated by plague and a populace fixated on the violence he has dreamed of finally escaping. A series of (unfortunately attenuated) episodes dramatizes Ahmet’s increasing disillusionment with his culture’s bellicosity, ethnic prejudice (he’s a Muslim married to a Christian), and unimaginative fatalism. Though Selimovi” too frequently employs his protagonist as representative man and mouthpiece, Ahmet’s vividly evoked contemplative demeanor and fundamental decency carry the reader through his story’s several longueurs.