Iz bosanske romantike: novele

This is the most famous book by the Bosnian-Herzegovinian writer Šemsudin Sarajlić (1887–1960). The collection contains several novels and short stories in which the author masterfully evokes the atmosphere of Bosnian city neighborhoods, villages and family life in the transitional period from the Ottoman to the Austro-Hungarian, and then into the new Yugoslav era.

Sarajlić's novels exude warmth, mild irony and a deep knowledge of Bosnian everyday life. He writes about old customs, iftars, teferičs, sevdalinkas, family dramas, poverty and pride, loves and conflicts between tradition and the new time. His characters – old hodžas, poor craftsmen, young girls, highlanders – are lively and convincing, and the language is rich in Bosnian color, expressions and phrases that are now part of the cultural heritage.

The book represents the peak of the so-called Bosnian Romanticism in Literature – a movement that combines realistic depictions of life with romantic nostalgia for the old, patriarchal Bosnia that is slowly disappearing. Sarajlić does not idealize the past, but portrays it with a lot of love and understanding, which makes this collection a precious testimony to Bosnian social and cultural history.

From Bosnian Romanticism, it is considered a classic of Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature between the two wars and one of the most beautiful depictions of the old Sarajevo and Bosnian milieu in our literature.