Profile of Mesa Selimovic on Famous Like Me

Mehmed Meša Selimović, Bosnian and Serbian prose writer who lived in Bosnia and Serbia, was one of the greatest 20th century novelists of Southeastern Europe.

He was born on April 26, 1910 in Tuzla, Bosnia, 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 high school that today bears his name. In 1943, he was arrested for collaboration with the partisans (anti-fascist resistance movement). From 1947 to 1971 he lived in Sarajevo, then moving to Belgrade to spend the rest of his life, where he died in 1982.

He wrote at least ten significant novels, the most important thereof being one that he wrote because his brother was in prison at Goli otok, Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt), speaking of the futility of one man's resistance against a pushing system, and the change that takes place within that man after he becomes a part of that very system, sometimes resembling Kafka's Prozess in several ways. The only other of his works to be translated into English is The Fortress.

Though being born in Bosnia and Muslim, Selimović declared himself as a Serb for much of his life.

Quote

• I descend from a Muslim family, from Bosnia, and by nationality I am a Serb. I belong to Serbian literature, while the literature of Bosnia, to which I also belong, I consider only as my geographic literature center, and not a distinct literature of Serbo-Croatian language... I belong, so, to the same nation and literature of Vuk, Matavulj, Stevan Sremac, Borisav Stankovic, Petar Kocic, Ivo Andric, and my deepest kinship with them I don't need to prove.

External link

• Mesa Selimovic in South Slavic Literature Library

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