BIH CULTURE LEADING FIGURES
LITERATURE
Ivo Andrić, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, is the most famous name of literature of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the world.
He was born in a village Dolac near Travnik in 1892. After finishing elementary and high school in Travnik, Višegrad and Sarajevo, Andrić continued his studies in Zagreb, Vienna and Krakow.
After receiving a doctorate in Graz in 1923, he joined the diplomatic core of the newly established Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Andrić left his last diplomatic mission, the ambassadorship in Berlin, immediately after Germany attacked and occupied Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941.
After returning to Belgrade, Andrić retired from public life, writing in the isolation of his home some of the best Romanesque, narrative and essay works in Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian language.
During the World War II he wrote his most important book – a novel “Na Drini ćuprija” (Bridge across Drina), for which he received a Nobel prize in 1961.
His other work – Travnička hronika, Gospođica, Pripovijetke, Prokleta avlija, and others belong to the highest category of literary art.
Andrić died on 13 March 1975.
Mehmedalija Meša Selimović
In addition to Mehmedalija Meša Selimović is undoubtedly the most reputable literary name of cultural history of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He was born in 1910 in Tuzla. After graduating from the Philosophic Faculty in Belgrade, until the World War II broke out, he worked as a gymnasium professor in his hometown. He was imprisoned in 1942 and in 1943 he joined partisans, the antifascist army of the peoples of Yugoslavia. After the war, he worked for a while as a university teacher in Sarajevo and assumed many important cultural duties. He spent his last years in Belgrade, his wife's hometown.
Selimović is a prosaic writer with variety of themes and genre orientation. His literary opus includes several books of short stories, novels, studies, essays, and polemic writings.
He achieved his biggest success with the novel “Derviš i smrt” (Dervish and death), for which he received all Yugoslav awards. His following novel "Tvrđava" (Fortress) (1970) was also very popular.
Meša Selimović died in Belgrade on 11 July 1982.
Mak Dizdar (1917. - 1971.)
Mak Dizdar is the most significant and the most original poet of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Born in a city of Stolac in Herzegovina, near which there is an ancient necropolis Radimlja, even as a boy, Mak Dizdar was already carried away in the mysteriousness of tombstones called stečci, which even though they are marking the resting places of the deceased, are in fact celebrating the "life in places of death".
Dizdar's most famous poem collection "Kameni spavač; - The Stone Sleeper" (1966), was inspired by the cult traditional art of stečci. Other collections of Dizdar, such as Vidovopoljske noći, Plivačica, Okrutnosti kruga, Koljena za madonu, Modra rijeka and others, are also very popular among poetry lovers.