Meša Selimović

Meša Selimović (; ; born Mehmed Selimović; 26 April 1910 – 11 July 1982) was a Yugoslav writer, whose works are widely considered some of the most important in Bosnian and Serbian literature. Some of the main themes in his works are the relations between individuality and authority, life and death, and other existential problems.

Biography Selimović was born to a prominent Bosnian Muslim family on 26 April 1910 in Tuzla, 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 Faculty of Philology and graduated in 1934. His lecturers included Bogdan Popović, Pavle Popović, Vladimir Ćorović, Veselin Čajkanović, Aleksandar Belić and Stjepan Kuljbakin. In 1936, he returned to Tuzla to teach at the Tuzla Gymnasium, that today bears his name. At that time he participated in the Soko athletic organisation. He spent the first two years of the Second World War in Tuzla, until he was arrested for participation in the Partisan anti-fascist resistance movement in 1943. After his release, he moved to liberated territory, became a member of Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the political commissar of the Tuzla Detachment of the Partisans. During the war, Selimović's brother, also a communist, was executed by partisans' firing squad for alleged theft, without trial; Selimović'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.

Identity

Selimović researched the roots of his family and found out that he originated from the Drobnjaci tribe. Most members of the tribe consider themselves to be Serbs, while some are Montenegrins. Bosnian biographer Aida Bajraktarević has stated that a part of the Selimović family converted to Islam in order to "protect their Christian brethren".

Selimović was a full member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. by claiming that his paternal heritage was that of Orthodox Christian identity, alleging a conversion to Islam back in the 17th century for pragmatic reasons. as well as his autobiography, Sjećanja.

Iranian writer and scholar Poopak Niktalab deemed Selimović one of the three pioneers of children's and youth literature in Muslim southeast Europe between 1950 and 1980 (along with Šukrija Pandžo and Skender Kulenović), who played an important role in the development of Bosnian children's and youth literature.

Family His brother's granddaughter is Serbian actress . Also, his cousin is a Bosnian actor. Meša Selimović is the uncle of Bosnian politician Mirsad Đonlagić.