Mihajlo Lalic

Born Oct. 7,1914, in Trepča, Montenegro. Yugoslav writer; member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (1967). Member of the Yugoslav League of Communists since 1936.

Lalić studied law at the University of Belgrade (beginning in 1933). He contributed to the progressive press and was arrested and persecuted. Beginning in 1941 he was a participant in the resistance movement; he was seized by the Gestapo and sentenced to death. He escaped from a concentration camp in Thessaloniki and joined the Greek partisans. He became a professional writer in the postwar years. His collection of poems Paths of Freedom and collection of short stories Reconnaissance were published in 1948.

Lalić won wide recognition in Yugoslavia and abroad for a cycle of novels about the people’s liberation struggle against fascism: The Wedding (1950; Russian translation, 1964), Vicious Spring (1953), The Rupture (1955), Mountain of Lament (1st ed., 1957; 2nd revised ed., 1962; Russian translation, 1968), and The Roundup (1960; Russian translation, 1969). The theme of revolutionary humanism occupies an important place in Lalić’s work, which is oriented toward moral and ethical problems. A firm adherent of the principles of classical realism, Lalić strives for psychologically realistic characters. He is the author of the collections of short stories The Last Height (1967), The Guests (1967), and Deserted Land (1968) and the novel Scraps of Darkness (1970).