Borisav Stanković

Borisav "Bora" Stanković (; 31 March 1876 – 22 October 1927) was a Serbian writer belonging to the school of realism. His novels and short stories depict the life of people from South Serbia. He belongs to an exceptional group of storytellers that appeared at the turn of the 20th century, Ivo Ćipiko, Petar Kočić, Milutin Uskoković, Svetolik Ranković, Veljko Milićević and others.

Biography He completed the primary and secondary school in Vranje, and graduated from the University of Belgrade's Law School. It is said that he received some Western education—Paris—but returned unaffected to his native soil and subsequently immortalized it in his work. He worked as a clerk (first customs official then tax official) in Belgrade. During World War I he resided in Niš, then in Montenegro where he was captured by the Austrians and incarcerated in a PoW camp in Derventa in Bosnia. After the war he worked in the Department of Arts of the Ministry of Education. He died at Belgrade on 22 October 1927.

Work Borisav Stanković's best work is the 1910 novel entitled Impure Blood (Nečista krv) about the plight of a young woman unable to free herself from the old customs and restrictions. In this story he explored the contradictions of man's spiritual and sensory life. This was the first Serbian novel to receive praise in its foreign translations from international literary critics. At the turn of the 20th century folk musicals became popular and the best play of this genre is Stanković's Koštana, written in 1902. Its bittersweet story of a beautiful Gypsy girl and her amorous conquest of an entire provincial town is intertwined with quasi-philosophical musing about the meaning of life and the passing of youth. Stanković's other play, Tašana, written in 1910, is also about provincial life in southern Serbia, which had just been liberated from the Turks but was still living under the imprint of the centuries-long occupation. In practically all his works Stanković presents strong characters who are at the same time victims of a strange weakness stemming from the realization that their time has irrevocably passed.

As an annual ceremony in honor of the writer, "Borina nedelja" (Bora's Week) is organized (established in 1967, and since 1976, beginning on March 23, the day of the writer's birth), then "Borini pozorišni dani" and a different world culture. In 1954, it was erected in the city park of the monument to Bora Stanković, and in 1964 the municipality bought his house from the new owners and in 1967 it officially opened as a museum-house. The symbolization of local identity with the help of Bora Stanković was especially important from the moment "Bora's Week" was established.