9 /10 1 Votes
Author Country Yugoslavia Publication date 1966 Playwright Meša Selimović Genre Novel | 4.5/5 Goodreads Original title Derviš i smrt Language Serbo-Croatian First performance 22 December 1995 Page count 473 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Publisher Northwestern University Press Adaptations Death and the Dervish (1974) Awards NIN Award, Sterija Award for Adaptation Similar Tvrdica, Messrs Glembay, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, Koštana, Dundo Maroje | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Death and the dervish
Death and the Dervish (Serbo-Croatian: Derviš i smrt/Дервиш и смрт) is a novel by Yugoslav/Bosnian writer Meša Selimović, published in 1966. The novel was made into a 1974 feature-length film of the same name.
Contents
Plot
Sheikh Nuruddin is a respected dervish in an Islamic monastery in eighteenth century Bosnia. He learns his brother Harun has been arrested by the Ottoman authorities but he struggles to determine exactly what happened and what he should do. He narrates the story as a kind of elaborate suicide note “from a need stronger than benefit or reason” and regularly misquotes (or misunderstands) the Quran, the sacred scriptures of his faith. Slowly the Sheikh starts to probe and question society, power and life in general. Speaking the truth leads to his being physically assaulted in the streets and even arrested briefly. Ultimately he fights and challenges the injustice of the world by employing deceit which succeeds at the expense of innocent life. Nuruddin replaces the old Kadı but is in turn corrupted by the need to uphold the original deceit.
Principal characters
Subject Matter
The principal theme of Death and the Dervish is “malodušnost,” a Serbo-Croatian word meaning diminished or reduced soul (translates as faint-heartedness, cowardice or indifference). The most popular interpretation of this popular novel is that Selimovic employed a fictional Ottoman setting to obscure a real critique of life in Communist Yugoslavia. Another important component is the fact that the story reflects a real-life incident in the author’s own life, when his brother, an ardent Communist functionary, was imprisoned and executed by Communist authorities after the war as an example to others for a very minor offense.