Svetolik Ranković

Svetolik Ranković (Serbian Cyrillic: Светолик Ранковић; Velika Moštanica, Principality of Serbia, 7 December 1863 – Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbia, 18 March 1899) was a Serbian writer prominent in the period of Realism. As a realist, he was the first Serbian author to take a significant step towards the emancipation of prose from the laws of event-centered narration. He was referred to as the Russian pupil for his elegant style.

Early life His father Pavle was a teacher in Velika Moštanica at the time of Svetolik's birth, and became a priest after the family moved to Garaši, a village in the Kragujevac district, near Arandjelovac. Ranković completed his high school and seminary in 1884 in Belgrade, and then went to Kyiv Theological Academy and graduated from there.

While Ranković was on summer vacation in 1886, bandits attacked the family home and killed his father Pavle, and tortured his mother and others.

Ministry After graduating from the Theological Academy in 1888, Svetolik returned to Serbia and began working as a religious education teacher at a Gymnasium in Kragujevac. In 1893, he was transferred to the Belgrade Theological Seminary, and in 1894, he was transferred again, to Niš. In 1897, he established himself as a gymnasium religious education teacher in Belgrade. Dissatisfied with his precarious status as a temporary acting part-time teacher, he intended to leave the profession. In 1890, he passed the professorship exam with an excellent grade for his dissertation "On Church Oratory". In 1900, the Serbian Literary Cooperative published the manuscript of "Broken Ideals" as its 62nd book, "The Mountain King," (Gorski Tsar) which Ranković completed in the last weeks of his life on his deathbed.

He was married to Bosilka, with whom he had three children.