DIVAN · Genres
Balkan literature
20 published works. Explore books by literary genre and discover new works.
A Modern Uprising
A Modern Uprising — Radoje Domanović. A dream carries the narrator a century backwards, but the people and institutions he finds are those of his own day. Ottoman rule and modern bureaucracy occupy the same streets. This deliberate mismatch turns a historical question, how a people might rise against oppression, into an examination of habits that make action endlessly postponable.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookA Trick for a Trick
A Trick for a Trick — Jovan Sterija Popović. A purse changes hands in a garden, and neighbourly advice becomes a weapon. A Trick for a Trick needs only two people and one hiding place. Its action is small enough to follow at a glance; its arguments expand to take in marriage, learning, commerce and conscience. Both men are gifted explainers, especially when an explanation makes self-interest sound respectable.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookDead Capital
In Dead Capital, a household argument can turn without warning into a discussion of wages, education, or the uses of land. Josip Kozarac brings these subjects together because, for his characters, they are already inseparable. A father's money pays for his son's studies; a young woman's marriage changes the balance of two households; a field left uncultivated becomes a question about the society around it.
Josip KozaracNoveleBook · AudiobookI Do Not Understand
I Do Not Understand — Radoje Domanović. The narrator wants to become a soldier. He imagines that patriotic enthusiasm will open the barracks doors and earn him a warm welcome. Instead, his living presence becomes a problem for a military administration whose records say otherwise.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookMiloš Obilić
Miloš Obilić — Jovan Sterija Popović. In Miloš Obilić, honour is both a source of strength and a point of vulnerability. A hero who wants to free Serbia from foreign rule must answer an insult to his own name; a decision declared in public becomes an obligation that even love cannot easily restrain. Against his openness stand Branković’s envy, Negoda’s resourcefulness and Lazar’s willingness to believe a rumour once it takes the form of a letter.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookNo Escape
No Escape — Radoje Domanović. Every editor in Nigde spasa (No Escape) has only a small request. An article on vines, a contribution on raising foals, a brief patriotic story: surely an educated writer can oblige. Their courtesy makes refusal harder, and the narrator’s attempt to find a subject becomes more oppressive than the work itself. What begins with a ruined afternoon grows into a pursuit through streets, shops and finally the countryside.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookSvetislav and Mileva
Svetislav and Mileva — Jovan Sterija Popović. In Svetislav and Mileva, peace arrives as a demand made upon a family. After the defeat at Kosovo, Milica and Stefan seek a way to preserve their country; the price Bajazit sets includes Mileva’s marriage. She becomes the point at which duty to the fatherland, maternal love and an existing pledge of love collide. The play conducts its political argument through conversations between people who love one another and nevertheless cause one another pain.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookSympathy and Antipathy
Sympathy and Antipathy — Jovan Sterija Popović. Agnica reads a story and decides to turn it into a performance. Her parents dislike the man she wants to marry, so she devises an illness that only his presence can relieve. The audience hears the plan before the household sees its effects. This difference in knowledge is the play’s engine: each new sign confirms a theory to the doctor while revealing a piece of stagecraft to us.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Abolition of Passions
The Abolition of Passions — Radoje Domanović. A country has ten good men and a population seething with dangerous passions. Reading newspapers, building schools, helping the poor and buying flowers all appear in its catalogue of misconduct. Domanović lets the accusations accumulate in the sober language of official reports until ordinary civic life itself looks like a conspiracy.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe Dead Man’s Wife
The Dead Man’s Wife — Borisav Stanković. Anica begins this story almost without a name. She is a widow visiting a grave, a mother leading a child, someone recognised through the man to whom she belonged. Only after following her from the cemetery into the streets and back behind her gate does the narrative name her.
Borisav StankovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe Enchanted Donkey
The Enchanted Donkey — Jovan Sterija Popović. The donkey in this comedy never speaks. Everyone else speaks a great deal, and their eloquence makes the animal seem increasingly sensible. Three students discover a sleeping peasant and a donkey they would like to turn into money. Their solution depends on a theatrical substitution: one student stays behind in the animal’s place, ready to explain the miracle when the owner wakes.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Fate of a Mind
The Fate of a Mind — Jovan Sterija Popović. A Doctor of Philosophy has misplaced his mind. His servants look for it as though it were an object left in a room, and the Doctor eventually advertises a reward for its return. The joke grows out of the language he teaches: once a mind can sit at home, a river can have shoulders and a school can float, figures of speech become things that can walk, quarrel and get lost.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Liar and His Accomplice
The Liar and His Accomplice — Jovan Sterija Popović. Two hungry adventurers stop before a respectable house and invent a social position for themselves. Aleksa becomes Baron Golić, Mita his servant. Yet skill in lying is not all that opens the door: within the house is already a desire to hear exactly what they offer.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Patriots
The Patriots — Jovan Sterija Popović. A cockade can be taken off in a moment. In The Patriots, that small action becomes a political system. The same men discover first that freedom requires Hungarian colours, then that Serbian colours are indispensable, then that both may be worn at once. Their explanations grow more elaborate as their principles grow cheaper.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Quarrelsome Husband
The Quarrelsome Husband — Jovan Sterija Popović. Maksim can find fault with a clean room because too much cleaning wears out the floor. An untidy room would condemn his wife just as surely. The trouble in The Quarrelsome Husband is therefore more stubborn than a disagreement about housework: any answer can be made wrong by a man determined to complain.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Singer’s Easter
A singer can turn private sorrow into public pleasure, but what happens when the sorrow becomes too great to sing? In Pevačev Uskrs (The Singer’s Easter), Radoje Domanović follows Pera through the preparations for a holiday that other households can afford to celebrate. Lambs, new clothes, cakes and painted eggs are ordinary comforts to the people around him.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe Slava
The Slava — Radoje Domanović. A rider returning to his village meets a child watching three sheep in the rain. Their conversation turns from work and taxes to the next day's family celebration. The boy expects his mother's preparations to be understood at once; the adult narrator hears in them the effort required to keep a poor household within the circle of ordinary social life.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe Vow
The Vow — Simo Matavulj. In The Vow, a word spoken within a family becomes an obligation reaching into love, religion and public life. Dubrovnik is more than a backdrop: aristocratic pride, memories of former independence, newspaper accusations and municipal elections enter the drawing room itself. Ivo tries to reconcile political conviction, his love for Milica and tenderness towards his ailing mother. What one person calls duty becomes another’s intolerable sacrifice.
Simo MatavuljDramaeBook · AudiobookTheatre in a Small Town
Theatre in a Small Town — Radoje Domanović. A small town notices everything: a missing rooster, a badly played card, a neighbour's talent for preparing radishes. Its narrator treats this vigilant attention as proof that provincial life nurtures talent. What follows tests that claim by bringing a theatre into the town's ordinary routines.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookUskok: The Fugitive
Uskok: The Fugitive — Simo Matavulj. A man escaping from Kotor climbs towards Montenegro at Christmas, carrying an imperial uniform beneath a borrowed coat and a past he cannot leave behind. The mountains offer him more than shelter. They offer a name, a place at the hearth and membership in a brotherhood. In Uskok, becoming one of a community is at once an act of generosity and an undertaking with consequences.
Simo MatavuljNoveleBook · Audiobook