Ivo Andrić

The slogan Slav South to Czech Friends which was the motto of the concert of Goran Bregovic and his Orchestra for Weddings and Funerals could be used again for yet another big endeavor of the association Lastavica: the collected works of Ivo Andric in six books. It was originally the idea of a businessman Milutin Peric who wanted to give his favourite author’s books as a gift to his business friends only to find out that no Andric’s books could be found and bought. In 1987 the works of Andric were published in three books by the Gallery of Classics, Odeon publishers, and were sold out. Since then none of Andric’s books have been published in Czech. Mr. Peric did his best to offer the works of the only Yugoslav Nobel Prize laureate to Czech readers. Thanks to him, we have the most extensive collection of Ivo Andric’s works ever to be published in Czech.

The first two books are well known novels The Bridge on the Drina and Travnik Chronicle. The novel The Woman from Sarajevo which was firstly published in 1947 under the title Slecna dela penize (A Woman making money) and was staged by the Czech TV with an excellent Gabriela Vranova in the leading role is in the new translation attached to the first book Jelena, the Woman of My Dream which is a selection of stories featuring mostly tragic women heroes. The novella The Damned Yard is in the second book of stories under the title The Vizier’s Elephant. This second book concentrates on Andric’s favourite characters the Franciscans or some other strange characters of another religion in author’s native Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The third and fourth books include 39 stories out of about hundred that Andric wrote. The fifth book includes two posthumously published works, a collection of stories The House on Its Own (Dum o samote) and an unfinished novel Omer Pasha Latas , which had also been  translated in previous editions. The last book contains a collection of Andric’s poems he wrote as a young man, Ex Ponto and Unrest (Nepokoje), then a collection from the posthumously compiled poems, What seems to be to me and what is happening to me (Co se mi zda a co se mi deje). Further, this last book includes a collection of his observations and thoughts from Signs by the Roadside (Znameni u cesty) and his most important essays, such as the ones on St Francis of Assisi, Petrarka and Laura, Goya and Njegos, the ruler of Montenegro, an excellent and a very well known poet. There is a supplement of the book with the Biography of Ivo Andric, written by Radovan Popovic and documented by a lot of quotations from Andric’s letters, then there is the bibliography of all Czech editions and a dictionary of all Czech translators.

This new edition was prepared by the editor Dušan Karpatský and the co-editor Irena Wenigová. Translators are: O.F.Babler, Milada Černá, Jiří Fiedler, Dušan Karpatský, Viktor Kudělka, Milada Nedvědová and Vladimír Togner.