Ivo Andric - Biography

Title:The Vizier's Elephant

Author: Ivo Andric

  

Ivo Andric was born in the village of Dolac, near Travnik, in 1892. After spending his youth in his native Bosnia, which was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he studied philosophy at the Universities of Zagreb, Vienna, and Cracow. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War, at the beginning of which he was jailed for his anti-Austrian activities. After receiving a doctorate in letters from the University of Graz in 1923, he entered the Yugoslav diplomatic service. The last diplomatic post he held was that of Yugoslav minister in Berlin. When Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, Andric returned to Belgrade and lived there in seclusion throughout the Second World War. He has continued to reside in the Yugoslav capital.

Andric started his literary career as a poet. In 1914 he was one of the contributors to Hrvatska mlada lirika (Young Croatian Lyrics). At the end of the war he published two books of lyrical prose.Then followed a long period in which Andric concentrated on the writing of short stories. His first novella, Put Alije Djerzeleza (The Trip of Alija Djerzelez), published in 1920, early manifests a dominant trait of his creative process.

Ivo Andric died on March 13, 1975.