Meša Selimović (Serbian Cyrillic: Меша Селимовић; pronounced [mɛ̌ːʃa sɛlǐːmɔʋitɕ]; born Mehmed Selimović; April 26, 1910 – July 11, 1982) was a Yugoslav writer. His works are considered very important in Bosnian and Serbian literature. Common themes in his writing include how individuals relate to authority, the meaning of life and death, and other big questions about life.
Biography
Selimović was born on April 26, 1910, in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to a well-known Bosnian Muslim family. He completed elementary school and high school in Tuzla.
In 1930, he began studying the Serbo-Croatian language and literature at the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Philology. He graduated in 1934. His teachers 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, which is now named after him. At that time, he joined the Soko athletic organization. He stayed in Tuzla for the first two years of World War II until he was arrested in 1943 for participating in the Partisan anti-fascist resistance movement. After being released, he moved to a region controlled by the Partisans, joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, and became a political commissar of the Tuzla Detachment of the Partisans. During the war, Selimović’s brother, who was also a communist, was executed by a Partisan firing squad for alleged theft without a trial. Selimović wrote a letter defending his brother, but it had no effect. This event likely influenced his later work, Death and the Dervish, where the main character fails to save his imprisoned brother.
After the war, Selimović briefly lived in Belgrade. In 1947, he moved to Sarajevo, where he worked as a professor at the High School of Pedagogy and the Faculty of Philology, served as art director of Bosna Film, led the drama section of the National Theater, and worked as chief editor of the publishing house Svjetlost. In 1971, he moved to Belgrade again after conflicts with local politicians and intellectuals. He lived there until his death in 1982.
Selimović researched his family history and discovered that his ancestors belonged to the Drobnjaci tribe. Most members of the tribe identify as Serbs, while some consider themselves Montenegrins. A Bosnian biographer, Aida Bajraktarević, noted that some members of the Selimović family converted to Islam to “protect their Christian family members.”
Selimović was a full member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
In his autobiographical work, Sjećanja (Memoirs), Selimović describes the environment and culture of his Bosnian Muslim background. He reflects on his identity as complex and layered. His memoirs blend personal experiences with broader social and historical contexts. Through his writing, he uses imagery to explore cultural differences among Bosnian Muslims, reinforcing their shared identity. He clearly states, “I am a Muslim,” and “I am attached to my Bosnian and Muslim origins.” However, when he shared details about his Christian ancestry, some Bosnian Muslim critics criticized him, arguing that others also knew their origins and questioning the purpose of publicizing such information.
Some critics believe Selimović’s emphasis on his Christian heritage was an attempt to gain recognition within the Serbian literary community, claiming his family converted to Islam in the 17th century for practical reasons. A chapter in Sjećanja titled “Parents” caused controversy in his home country and was described as a “constructed phantasm” or imaginary narrative.
Selimović was a communist and an atheist.
Works
Selimović began writing later in his life. His first short story, Pjesma u oluji (A Song in the Storm), was published in 1948 when he was thirty-six. His first book, a collection of short stories titled Prva četa (The First Company), was published in 1950 when he was forty. His next book, Tišine (Silences), was published eleven years later in 1961. The following books, Tuđa zemlja (Foreign Land, 1962) and Magla i mjesečina (Mist and Moonlight, 1965), did not gain wide recognition.
However, his novel Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt, 1966) was widely praised as a masterpiece. The story takes place in 18th-century Sarajevo under Ottoman rule and reflects Selimović’s personal pain from the execution of his brother. It describes the helplessness of one man fighting against a harsh system and how he changes after joining that system. Some critics compared this novel to Kafka’s The Trial. The book has been translated into many languages, including English, Russian, German, French, Italian, Turkish, and Arabic. Each chapter begins with a quote from the Quran, the first being: “In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful.”
His next novel, Tvrđava (The Fortress, 1970), set even further in the past, is slightly more hopeful and filled with belief in love, unlike the loneliness and fear in Death and the Dervish. The Fortress, Death and the Dervish, and the later novel Ostrvo (The Island, 1974), which follows an elderly couple facing aging and death on a Dalmatian island, are the only novels by Selimović translated into English so far. The book Krug (The Circle, 1983), published after his death, has not been translated into English.
Selimović also wrote a book about Vuk Karadžić’s orthographic reforms, Za i protiv Vuka (For and Against Vuk), and his autobiography, Sjećanja.
Iranian writer and scholar Poopak Niktalab said Selimović was one of three pioneers of children’s and youth literature in Muslim Southeast Europe between 1950 and 1980 (along with Šukrija Pandžo and Skender Kulenović). These writers played an important role in developing Bosnian children’s and youth literature.
Family
His brother's granddaughter is Serbian actress Hana Selimović [sr]. Additionally, his cousin Amar Selimović [bs] is a Bosnian actor. Meša Selimović is the uncle of Bosnian politician Mirsad Đonlagić.