way two boys form a bond that carries them through life's tragedies and trials". Galloway was recognized for successfully portraying a child's perspective without "giving a child an adult's perspective". The ethnic and economic diversity of the characters had critics describing it as a "truly Canadian book both in content and sensibility". It was noted that "The style of Galloway's early literary influences, Farley Mowat and John Irving, is apparent" in this first novel. Ascension His second novel, Ascension (2003), was nominated for the BC Book Prizes' Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and has been translated into over fifteen languages. Notably different from his first novel, Ascension takes a look at the events in the life of a 66-year-old Romanian man leading up to his famous tight rope walking between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. "He expertly walks a very fine line, spinning the makings of what might have been a gimmicky immigrant tale into a gripping story of one man's lifelong balancing act." The Cellist of Sarajevo Galloway's third novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo (2008), was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the 2009 Evergreen Award, the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature and the Borders Original Voices Award. It was heralded as "the work of an expert" by The Guardian, and has become an international bestseller with rights sold in over 30 countries. The novel is set during the siege of Sarajevo in the mid-1990s and explores the dilemmas of ordinary people caught in the crisis. The title references the true story of Vedran Smailović, a cellist who played Albinoni's Adagio "dressed in evening tails and perching on a fire-scorched chair" every day for 22 days, "always at the same location", to "honour the 22 people killed by a mortar bomb while they queued for bread at 10 in the morning on May 26, 1992". The novel follows the lives of three fictional citizens of Sarajevo as they struggle to survive the war, including one who seeks to protect the cellist: "He has said he will do this for twenty-two days. This is the eighth. People see him. The world has seen him. We cannot allow him to be killed." The novel examines the gentleness found in humanity and the lasting and healing power of art. Vedran Smailović did not learn of the