Gloria in excelsis, a novel composed of three parts, three destinies, and three stories told by three narrators, is incredibly intricate and dense, further enriched by the interweaving of many other lives within the stories of these narrators. The central story follows a Bosnian Franciscan friar from the eighteenth century who, in the form of a chronicle, records three years of events in and around his monastery. The second narrator, a Royal Air Force pilot, recounts his four-month stay in postwar Zagreb. The third story, set in Sarajevo, unfolds over just more than an hour on April 2, 1945, during the Allied bombing of the city, as experienced by the caretaker and keyholder of a shelter, Šimun Paškvan. Jergović skillfully portrays the social backdrop of each era and the mechanisms of power. Gloria in excelsis is one of Jergović’s most complex novels, in which he tackles profound, even metaphysical, themes with remarkable maturity.
