Living, as we do, in the age of the memoir—or, in some cases, the fabricated memoir—it’s not surprising that novelists find themselves having to lay an autobiographical claim on a subject before they can plant their laptops on it. For marketing reasons and fears of “voice appropriation”, writers are often discouraged from writing too far outside their personal experience—not to mention their race, nationality, or gender.

However, those searching for Steven Galloway in his new novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo (Knopf Canada, $29.95), will come up empty-handed. At first sight, the 32-year-old, Vancouver-born writer seems the least likely person to write this book: he’s not Serbian and, until recently, he had never set foot in Eastern Europe.

Still, before even appearing this spring, The Cellist of Sarajevo earned enviable advances from 17 territories (in Spain, the book will be published in both Spanish and Catalan) and had Hollywood studios battling for the film rights.

Galloway’s novel tackles one of the more brutal chapters of recent history: the siege of Sarajevo that killed 12,000 people, mostly civilians, between 1992 and 1995. Its title comes from the true-life story of Vedran Smailovi?, a local cellist who played the Adagio in G minor (attributed to Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni) at the site of a mortar attack for 22 straight days, in May and June of 1992, to honour the number of people killed in the blast.

The cellist is more of a unifying element than a character in the novel, which follows the lives of three denizens of the urban war zone over a handful of days: Arrow, a female sniper assigned to protect the cellist; Kenan, who crosses town, risking gunfire and mortar shells, to collect drinking water for his family; and Dragan, who finds himself in a situation where he must either ignore the brutality destroying his hometown or offer resistance with a simple gesture of decency. In each of these artfully told narrative strands, humanity glimmers even in the worst circumstances, and the redemptive power of art is asserted.

Raised in Kamloops, Galloway moved to Vancouver to study in UBC’s creative-writing department. “Sparsely framed,” as he puts it, with wavy brown hair and gold wire-rimmed glasses, and always resplendent in a cardigan, he doesn’t look altogether different than he did when I met him in our second-year creative-writing class in 1994.

“What I remember most is not having a clue what I was doing,” Galloway says of that second-year class, in conversation at a Main Street café. “You don’t figure it out all at once.”

Galloway, in fact, almost didn’t get a chance to figure it out at UBC. In his third year, he was turned away by the department from its major program. The next fall, when he was accepted, he found himself among many writers who drew primarily from personal experience, favouring voice and style over plot and story.

“I examine my life in a nonprofessional way more than enough,” says Galloway, who cites Farley Mowat and John Irving as early influences. “Part of what I like about being a writer is getting to live in an imaginary world all day long and think about lives that aren’t my own.”

To inhabit the imaginary world of his new novel, Galloway first had to visit the real Sarajevo in 2006 to get a sense of the city’s locales and conduct interviews. “There were two distinct reactions,” he says. “One reaction was very positive. A lot of Sarajevans feel that the story hasn’t been adequately told about what went on there. The other reaction was: ”˜What the hell are you trying to do here? You have no business talking about this.’ ”

Generous publishers from around the world seem to agree he’s gotten it right. With the proceeds from his new book, Galloway bought a century-old heritage house in New Westminster, where he lives with his wife, Lara, and his two young children. (Full disclosure: his older child, Katharine, is my goddaughter. We’re also in a hockey pool together.) “I didn’t buy it outright,” he adds quickly, trying to downplay his success. “I have kids; they need to live indoors.”

In spite of his new windfall, he continues to work at UBC, where he’s taught as a sessional instructor since 2001.

Are there any young Steven Galloways in his classes? “God, I hope not,” he says. “It’s much more difficult to get in than when I went. Someone like me wouldn’t have gotten in, even on the second round.” Indeed, the story of a plucky, underdog writer who creates a blockbuster is too unbelievable to be considered good fiction.