Zija Dizdarević

Zija Dizdarević (February 18 1916 - spring 1942) was a Bosnian prose writer.

Biography

He was born in Vitina, near Ljubuški, Bosnia and Herzegovina, from where he moved in 1920 to Fojnica. There he spent most of his youth and always came back regardless of all the other places he went to. After finishing primary school in Fojnica, he started grammar school in Sarajevo, and finshed it in 1936. This is when his literary and political work started.cite book |last=Rizvanbegović |first=Fahrudin |authorlink=Fahrudin Rizvanbegović |title=Čitanka |origyear=1994 |format=Paperback |year=1994 |publisher=Ministarstvo obrazovanja, nauke i kulture |location=Sarajevo |id=UP-I-03-611-2879/94] In those ages he managed to publish few short stories, and to get arrested for participating in youth strikes. In 1937 he started studying pedagogy in Belgrade, which then was a capital of the whole region, ie. Yugoslavia. His literary works started to appear in many papers, but also his political engagement rose. Even before he turned 30 the Second World War started. For a year he worked in Fojnica and Sarajevo as illegal cooperator, thus in spring of 1942, one day before joining the partisan army he was arrested in Sarajevo and taken to camp Jasenovac in Croatia, where he was executed shortly afterwards. cite book |last=Rizvanbegović |first=Fahrudin |authorlink=Fahrudin Rizvanbegović |title=Čitanka |origyear=1994 |format=Paperback |year=1994 |publisher=Ministarstvo obrazovanja, nauke i kulture |location=Sarajevo |id=UP-I-03-611-2879/94]

Works

Today Dizdarević is very famous and every textbook for elementary and/or middle school features at least one of his stories. Those stories are either from the social critique or the relistic description of everyday life.

In his writings, he used authentic Bosnian speech and dialect, spoken by uneducated common situations in their common lives, who were the main protagonists of his works.

His most famous story is "Majka" (mother) where he describes the life of a common woman, her devotion to her family, especially her children. The topic of the story is a death of one of her children, who suddenly got hit by the car. But the story explains the whole lot of the life of women and the childhood of a narrator (probably the writer himself, but evident is the usage of "Ich form").cite book |last=Rizvanbegović |first=Fahrudin |authorlink=Fahrudin Rizvanbegović |title=Čitanka |origyear=1994 |format=Paperback |year=1994 |publisher=Ministarstvo obrazovanja, nauke i kulture |location=Sarajevo |id=UP-I-03-611-2879/94]

List of works

All Dizdarević's works were published after his death. This is the list of titles and their first editions. List is in Bosnian, but possible translations into English are also given. There is no record that any of his works are translated into English until today.

:Pripovijetke (Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1948), "Short Stories":Prosanjane jeseni (Džepna knjiga, Sarajevo, 1959), "The Autumns That were Dreamt Away":Sabrana djela (Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1968), "Collected Works":Blago u duvaru (Zadrugar, Sarajevo, 1983), "Tresure in the Wall"

References