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Mehmed "Meša" Selimović (26 April 1910 - 11 July 1982) was a Yugoslav writer from Bosnia and Herzegovina and one of the greatest writers in Serbo-Croatian of the 20th century. His most famous works deal with Bosnia and Herzegovina and the culture of the Muslim inhabitants of the Ottoman province of Bosnia.

Biography

Selimović was born on April 26, 1910 in Tuzla, present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he graduated from elementary school and high school. In 1930, he enrolled to study the Serbo-Croatian language and literature at the University of Belgrade. In 1936, he returned to Tuzla to teach in the gymnasium that today bears his name. He spent the first two years of World War II in the hometown Tuzla, where he was arrested for participation in the Partisan anti-fascist resistance movement in 1943. After the release, he moved to the liberated territory, became a member of Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the political commissar of Tuzla Detachment of the Partisans. During the war, Meša's brother, also a communist, was executed by partisans' firing squad for alleged theft, without trial; Meša's letter in defense of the brother was to no avail. That episode apparently affected Meša's later contemplative introduction to Death and the Dervish, where the main protagonist Ahmed Nurudin fails to rescue his imprisoned brother.

After the war, he briefly resided in Belgrade, and in 1947 he moved to Sarajevo, where he was the professor of High School of Pedagogy and Faculty of Philology, art director of Bosna Film, chief of the drama section of the National Theater, and chief editor of the publishing house Svjetlost. Exasperated by a latent conflict with several local politicians and intellectuals, in 1971 he moved to Belgrade, where he lived until his death in 1982. In his 1976 letter to the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts, Selimović argued that despite his Muslim roots (he was a descendant of a notable bey family), he regarded himself as a Serb and a Serb writer.

Works

Selimović started writing fairly late: his first book, collection of short stories Prva četa (The First Company) was published in 1950, and the second, novel Tamnica (Prison) in 1961. Subsequent books Tuđa zemlja (Foreign land, 1962) and Magla i mjesečina (Mist and Moonlight, 1965) were not acclaimed much better.

However, his novel Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt, 1966) was widely received as a masterpiece. The novel reflected Selimović's own torment of the execution of his brother; the story speaks of the futility of one man's resistance against a repressive system, and the change that takes place within that man after he becomes a part of that very system. Some critics have likened this novel to Kafka's Prozess. It has been translated into numerous languages. Each chapter of the novel opens with a Qur'an citation, the first being: "In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful."

The second novel, Tvrđava (The Fortress, 1970), placed still further in the past, is slightly more optimistic, and fulfilled with faith in love, unlike the Nurudin's lonely contemplation and fear from The Dervish and Death. The Fortress and The Dervish and Death are the only novels of Selimović that have thus far been translated into English. Subsequent novels Ostrvo (The Island, 1974) and posthumously published Krug (The Circle, 1983), did not reach the power of expression and striking features of those two.

He also wrote a book about Vuk Karadžić's orthographic reforms, an elderly couple facing the aging and eventual death on a Dalmatian island, as well as his autobiography, Sjećanja (Сјећања)

Bibliography

• Uvrijeđeni čovjek (An Insulted Man) (1947)
• Prva četa (The First Company) (1950)
• Tuđa zemlja (An Alien Land) (1957)
• Noć i jutra (The Night and the Mornings) (film scenario) (1958)
• Tišine (Silences) (1961)
• Magla i mjesečina (Mist and Moonlight) (1965)
• Eseji i ogledi (Essays) (1966)
• Derviš i smrt (Death and the Dervish) (1966)
• Za i protiv Vuka (Pro et Contra Vuk) (1967)
• Tvrđava (Fortress) (1970)
• Ostrvo (The Island) (1974)
• Krug (The Circle) (1983)
• Sjećanja (Memories)

Translations into English

• Death and the Dervish, 1996, Northwestern University Press, ISBN 0810112973
• The Fortress, 1999, Northwestern University Press, ISBN 0810117134

References

1. ^ "Meša Selimović". Feniks magazine.
2. Božena Jelušić (edited by Terrice Bassler). Hard Waking Up (from Learning to Change: the experience of transforming education in South East Europe). Central European University Press. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
3. http://www.bhstring.net/tuzlauslikama/tuzlarije/tuzlarije.php?teka=ovihdana/selimovic.txt
4. http://www.novosti.rs/code/navigate.php?Id=16&status=jedna&datum=2009-02-24&feljton=7021
5. ^ "Кратка историја српске књижевности" (in Serbian). Project Rastko. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |аuthor= ignored (help)

External links

• Mesa Selimovic in South Slavic Literature Library
• Template:Sr iconFor and Against Vuk, study by Meša Selimović, 1967; courtesy of Project Rastko - Banja Luka
• Meša Selimović's 'Oriental Novels'

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