Cesarec, August

Born Dec. 4, 1893, in Zagreb; died July 1941, near Zagreb. Croatian writer. Member of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia for a period beginning in 1914; member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia from 1919.

Together with M. Krleza, Cesarec laid the foundations of the revolutionary literature of Croatia, which influenced all subsequent Yugoslavian literature. Cesarec was first published in 1910. His early works, as well as his collection of short stories In Search of a New Path (1926), were influenced by politically left-wing expressionism. Characteristics of social realism are clearly evident in the novella Judge Me (1925), the novels Caesar’s Kingdom (1925), A Golden Youth and His Victims (1928), and The Emigrés (1933), and the collection Short Stories (1939).

Cesarec was the first writer of the Croatian literature of the 1920’s and 1930’s to turn to the traditions of Croatian and Russian sociopsychological prose. In legends and allegorical parables written during the fascist occupation of Yugoslavia, he unmasked the totalitarian regime and called for a struggle against fascism. Cesarec was the author of Yugoslavia’s first sketches of the USSR. Also worthy of note is his Spanish Encounters (Toronto, 1938). Cesarec was shot by the fascists.