Ind Aff

Sarajevo, now the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is the city in which “Ind Aff” is set. It has a tumultuous and complex political history. Particularly relevant to the story are its roles as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and as part of Yugoslavia.

The Austro-Hungarian empire began to occupy Sarajevo in 1878, and the city officially became part of the empire in 1908. When Peter calls it the “Hungro-Austarian Empire” (Paragraph 31), this undermines his supposed historical expertise, and since the relationship is based partially on the narrator’s academic admiration of him, the cracks in the relationship begin to show.

On June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. According to conventional wisdom, this event triggered World War I due to the alliances of the assassinated parties. Peter and the narrator argue in the story about whether this event really caused World War I.

Princip was a nationalist—specifically, a member of Young Bosnia, a political group that believed in the liberation of the Bosnian people from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the ideal of a nation of Southern Slavs (including Bosnians). This nationalism is what the narrator of “Ind Aff” refers to when she repeatedly reflects upon Princip’s “inordinate affection” for his nation.