DIVAN · Genres
Regional classics
23 published works. Explore books by literary genre and discover new works.
A Flower at the Crossroads
A Flower at the Crossroads — Antun Gustav Matoš. A traveller lies down beside a neglected fountain. He has eaten, drunk, and found a patch of moss on which to rest. These ordinary acts open a landscape where sunlight softens stone, flowers sing, and the blue sky rustles like silk.
Antun Gustav MatošShort storyeBook · AudiobookAt the Well
At the Well — Laza Lazarević. A flask hangs from a plum tree for any passer-by to drink from. This small act of hospitality introduces a household so large that the narrator compares it to an army. Its work is shared, its welcome elaborate, and its hierarchy almost unquestioned. Into that order comes Anoka, a young bride accustomed to having her own way.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBookBakonja, Friar Brne
Bakonja, Friar Brne — Simo Matavulj. Before Bakonja arrives at the monastery, he already knows what makes a friar’s life desirable: a good horse, clean linen, a warm bed, meat, wine and the respect of everyone he meets. His relatives have another reason for sending him there. The Jerković family has supplied generations of friars, and the next appointment promises to keep both honour and material advantage within the right branch of the family.
Simo MatavuljNoveleBookFather Ćira and Father Spira
Father Ćira and Father Spira — Stevan Sremac. A village with two comfortable priests ought to have room enough for both. In Father Ćira and Father Spira, prosperity is precisely what makes rivalry so inventive. There is food to exchange, wine to praise, furniture to compare and a daughter in each household whose future can be discussed without anyone admitting to a plan.
Stevan SremacNoveleBookHe Knows Everything!
He Knows Everything! — Laza Lazarević. The boy who frightens his schoolmates fears only his elder brother. From that small contradiction Lazarević builds a story about affection that has trouble speaking its own name. Vučko's recklessness is almost a public institution; Vidak's authority seems equally settled. Yet the narrator's cheerful recollections keep disturbing the labels he puts on people.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBookIn the Night
In the Night — Borisav Stanković. In In the Night, the ordinary work of irrigating tobacco opens a space for everything Cveta tries to suppress. As she waits for the water, an encounter and a song restore the love that her social world would not allow. The field is more than a setting: the sound of a hoe, the thirst of the earth, moonlight and distant voices all enter into her remembering.
Borisav StankovićShort storyeBookIvko’s Slava
Ivko’s Slava — Stevan Sremac. A house prepared for one feast becomes the centre of a town that will not stop celebrating. Ivko the quilt-maker has saved his best food and drink for his slava, the annual observance of his family’s patron saint. He knows the duties of a good host and takes pride in meeting them. His friends know those duties too. The comedy begins when they discover how much can be demanded in the name of friendship, custom and one more glass.
Stevan SremacShort storyeBookKanjoš Macedonović
Kanjoš Macedonović — Stjepan Mitrov Ljubiša. Kanjoš goes to Venice as a merchant and returns with a commission better suited to a hero of epic poetry. Yet Ljubiša’s tale is in no hurry to reach the duel. First it takes us through waiting rooms, customs demands and polished speeches, then back to the Paštrovići, where the cost of protection and freedom is debated without ceremony. The small man must confront both a giant and other people’s ideas of what a hero should look like.
Stjepan Mitrov LjubišaShort storyeBook · AudiobookMy Friend Lovro
My Friend Lovro — August Šenoa. Rain cancels a country-house vintage party, and conversation settles into the safe topics of respectable company: politics, fruit trees, household work. A young widow refuses to be entertained. She is bored by Croatian stories, she says, because their little world produces only little events.
August ŠenoaShort storyeBook · AudiobookPrince Marko Among the Serbs Again
Prince Marko Among the Serbs Again — Radoje Domanović. What happens when a nation gets the hero it keeps asking for? Domanović gives the question an embarrassingly literal answer. Prince Marko, exhausted by centuries of appeals to rise from the grave, obtains permission to return.
Radoje DomanovićSatireeBook · AudiobookStories
Stories — Janko Leskovar. Leskovar’s stories follow people troubled by memories, doubts and unspoken desires. The collection opens with a schoolmaster’s restless inner life in “A Thought of Eternity”.
Janko LeskovarShort story collectioneBook · AudiobookTales from Long Ago
Tales from Long Ago — Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. A young man seeks the truth while forgetting the person who needs him. A fisherman dreams of splendour and fails to recognise the happiness already in his house. A giant can move earth and water but needs a child's suggestion to know how. In Tales from Long Ago, extraordinary powers repeatedly expose an ordinary difficulty: understanding what we owe one another.
Ivana Brlić-MažuranićFairy taleseBookThe Alka Rider
The Alka Rider — Dinko Šimunović. In Dinko Šimunović’s Alkar, the landscape is no passive background to human events. Summer heat, blue haze, the rumble of hooves and the storm wind gradually acquire the force of feelings the characters find hard to express. The Cetina countryside appears peaceful, while its image of its own past is renewed each year in the alka tournament. The story follows what happens when that shared measure of heroism enters the most intimate relationships.
Dinko ŠimunovićShort storyeBookThe Brand
The Brand — Radoje Domanović. A man who bows to a police uniform's discarded button is an unusual guide to a dream. Yet the narrator of The Brand offers this incident as proof of his good character. Before he reaches the strange country where most of the story takes place, his own account has already made obedience look involuntary: hand, head and mouth salute almost without consulting their owner.
Radoje DomanovićSatireeBook · AudiobookThe Extraordinary Adventures of the Apprentice Hlapić
The Extraordinary Adventures of the Apprentice Hlapić — Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. Hlapić takes little with him: some food, a few shoemaker's tools, and the boots that caused a quarrel in the workshop. His most important possessions cannot be packed in a satchel. They are his ability to mend things and his habit of taking other people's troubles seriously. His journey begins as an escape from injustice, but soon becomes a succession of encounters in which he must decide what he owes to strangers.
Ivana Brlić-MažuranićChildren’s literatureeBookThe Last Stipančićs
The Last Stipančićs — Vjenceslav Novak. The room in which The Last Stipančićs opens is almost sealed against the world. The air is too warm, the furniture too large, and the light too weak. Beyond the windows the bora roars through Senj; inside, a mother watches her daughter and tries to keep suffering at bay. Before the novel tells us how this family once lived, it makes us feel what its remaining life costs.
Vjenceslav NovakNoveleBookThe Mountain King
The Mountain King — Svetolik Ranković. A young man’s need for recognition collides with village prejudice and draws him towards an outlaw’s life. Ranković explores the line between injustice endured and violence inflicted.
Svetolik RankovićNoveleBook · AudiobookThe Rainbow
The Rainbow — Dinko Šimunović. The first sentence of Duga places a town between a river and a wall of cliffs. Almost at once that landscape becomes a measure of freedom. While the adults of Čardaci sleep through the heat and their daughters wait indoors, the boys have the river, the meadows and the sun. Ten-year-old Srna hears that larger world through an open window. Her parents call their restrictions care; her body experiences them as confinement.
Dinko ŠimunovićShort storyeBookThe School Icon
The School Icon — Laza Lazarević. “Our village had a church, and the church had a priest.” From this deceptively simple beginning, Lazarević builds a world in which authority, affection and daily work seem inseparable. The priest belongs to everyone, and everyone belongs, in some measure, to him. When a daughter comes unexpectedly into his life, the village helps to raise her. Her future becomes its shared hope.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBookThe Wind
The Wind — Laza Lazarević. Janko lives comfortably with his mother and thinks of marriage as something that time and chance will arrange. A visit to the hospital where his friend Joca works brings him face to face with suffering he cannot readily explain away. Recognition, gratitude and desire begin to unsettle the language in which he understands his own life.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe World
The World — Branislav Đ. Nušić. The clock strikes three, a daughter brings her father back from sleep, and the newspaper offers the comforting question of what Russia thinks. In Toma Melentijević’s house, even the old furniture has its place in the family. His friend Sima has a programme for retirement that would turn every passing incident into entertainment. Toma prefers the garden, the poultry and a quiet cup of coffee.
Branislav Đ. NušićDramaeBookWerther
Werther — Laza Lazarević. A spa is a place to recover one’s health, and an excellent place to lose one’s perspective. Lazarević begins by comparing a fashionable visit to the baths with a war: both demand preparation, waste money and end in negotiations at home. Among the officers, officials, card players and self-appointed experts stands Janko, a thirty-year-old man whose feelings still expect the world to behave like a novel.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBookZona Zamfirova
Zona Zamfirova — Stevan Sremac. A song escapes from a silversmith's apprentice, a slap interrupts it, and the story has already begun to circulate. In Zona Zamfirova, very little belongs only to the people immediately concerned. A glance becomes a report, a family argument becomes public entertainment, and a young woman's reputation can be remade by neighbours who have seen nothing at all.
Stevan SremacNoveleBook · Audiobook