Skender Kulenović

Skender Kulenović (2 September 1910 – 25 January 1978) was a Bosnian writer.

Biography Skender Kulenović was born in 1910 in the Bosnian town of Bosanski Petrovac (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), to Bosnian Muslim parents. Kulenović hailed from the landowning Bey family, one of the richest and oldest in Bosnia. However, in 1921, his family became impoverished due to the agrarian reforms brought in by the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia and they moved to the central Bosnian town of Travnik, his mother's birthplace. In Travnik, Kulenović completed his high school education at the local Jesuit gymnasium. There he wrote his first poems, culminating in the publication of a set of sonnets (Ocvale primule) in 1927. He then went to Zagreb to study law. He would give up his law studies and begin to focus on writing. In 1937, he co-founded the left-wing journal Putokaz (Signpost) with Hasan Kikić and Safet Krupić, which became a forum for discussing various socio-economic issues.

In late 1939 or early 1940, Skender Kulenović was expelled from the KPJ for having refused to sign an open letter criticising the government and advocating autonomy for Bosnia and Herzegovina – a decision which prevented him from publishing in many of the journals he had worked with until then. In 1940 he married his first wife, Ana Prokop.

In 1941, at the outbreak of World War II after Yugoslavia was invaded, Kulenović was still in Zagreb. He joined Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslav Partisans and was transferred to the Bosnian Krajina region where he served as a member of the First Partisan Detachment. His refusal to abide by the rules led Kulenović to fall out of favor with authorities and move to the city of Mostar.

He died in Belgrade in January 1978 of heart failure.

The historian Pål Kolstø cites Kulenović and Meša Selimović as among the prominent Bosnian writers with a "stubborn Yugoslav or mixed Yugoslav-ethnic identity" which makes it difficult to incorporate or define their works along any one particular line. His literary work is a part of common heritage of Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins and Bosniaks.