Short stories
Башта сљезове боје
Not translated into English
Branko Ćopić · 1970
Synopsis
Stories of the narrator's childhood in a village in the Bosnian Krajina: the grandfather by his quiet little fire, the uncle who consoles himself with brandy, the neighbours, the expeditions of boys who thought themselves very bold and infinitely rich, like the march towards the Moon that gives one of them its title. The man who tells them looks at this vanished world with humour and tenderness, and a loss surfaces on every page, though it is not always clear what has been lost.
Context
The collection appeared in 1970 and in 1972 received the Njegoš Prize; the following year the author published another book drawn from the same stock of memories. Commentators read these stories as the portrait of a world of culture in which man grows up, from childhood to maturity, and as the writer's return to the spoken, narrated word, which was for him a way of freeing himself. The titles of the stories, often metaphorical, have been the subject of separate studies.
Who it is for
Short stories, in a flavourful regional language. None of them requires prior knowledge; it is enough to know that the Bosnian Krajina is a region of mountains and poor villages.
Prizes and reception
Awarded the Njegoš Prize in 1972, the book has gone through more than ten editions and remains one of its author's most widely read.