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Ivo Andrić (Serbian Cyrillic: Иво Андрић, pronounced [ǐːʋo ǎːndritɕ]; born Ivan Andrić; 9 October 1892 – 13 March 1975) was a Yugoslav novelist, poet and short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961. His writings dealt mainly with life in his native Bosnia under Ottoman rule. Born in Travnik in Austria-Hungary, modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, Andrić attended high school in Sarajevo, where he became an active member of several South Slav national youth organizations. Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, Andrić was arrested and imprisoned by the Austro-Hungarian police, who suspected his involvement in the plot. As the authorities were unable to build a strong case against him, he spent much of the war under house arrest, only being released following a general amnesty for such cases in July 1917. After the war, he studied South Slavic history and literature at universities in Zagreb and Graz, eventually attaining his PhD. in Graz in 1924. He worked in the diplomatic service of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1920 to 1923 and again from 1924 to 1941. In 1939, he became Yugoslavia's ambassador to Germany, but his tenure ended in April 1941 with the German-led invasion of his country. Shortly after the invasion, Andrić returned to German-occupied Belgrade. He lived quietly in a friend's apartment for the duration of World War II, in conditions likened by some biographers to house arrest, and wrote some of his most important works, including Na Drini ćuprija (The Bridge on the Drina). Following the war, Andrić was named to a number of ceremonial posts in Yugoslavia, which had since come under communist rule. In 1961, the Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature, selecting him over writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert Frost, John Steinbeck and E. M. Forster. The Committee cited "the epic force with which he ... traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from his country's history". Afterwards, Andrić's works found an international audience and were translated into a number of languages. In subsequent years, he received a number of awards in his native country. Andrić's health declined substantially in late 1974 and he died in Belgrade the following March. In the years following Andrić's death, the Belgrade apartment where he spent much of World War II was converted into a museum and a nearby street corner was named in his honour. A number of other cities in the former Yugoslavia also have streets bearing his name. In 2012, filmmaker Emir Kusturica began construction of an ethno-town in eastern Bosnia that is named after Andrić. As Yugoslavia's only Nobel Prize-winning writer, Andrić was well known and respected in his native country during his lifetime. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, beginning in the 1950s and continuing past the breakup of Yugoslavia, his works have been disparaged by Bosniak literary critics for their supposed anti-Muslim bias. In Croatia, his works had occasionally been blacklisted following Yugoslavia's dissolution in the 1990s, but were rehabilitated by the literary community. He is highly regarded in Serbia for his contributions to Serbian literature. Early life Family Ivan Andrić was born in the village of Dolac, near Travnik, on 9 October 1892, while his mother, Katarina (née Pejić), was in the town visiting relatives. Andrić's parents were both Catholic Croats. He was his parents' only child. His father, Antun, was a struggling silversmith who resorted to working as a school janitor in Sarajevo, where he lived with his wife and infant son. At the age of 32, Antun died of tuberculosis, like most of his siblings. Andrić was only two years old at the time. Widowed and penniless, Andrić's mother took him to Višegrad and placed him in the care of her sister-in-law Ana and brother-in-law Ivan Matković, a police officer. The couple were financially stable but childless, so they agreed to look after the infant and brought him up as their own. Meanwhile, Andrić's mother returned to Sarajevo seeking employment. Andrić was raised in a country that had changed little since the Ottoman period despite being mandated to Austria-Hungary at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Eastern and Western culture intermingled in Bosnia to a far greater extent than anywhere else in the Balkan peninsula. Having lived there from an early age, Andrić came to cherish Višegrad, calling it "my real home". Though it was a small provincial town (or kasaba), Višegrad proved to be an enduring source of inspiration. It was a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional town, the predominant groups being Serbs (Orthodox Christians) and Bosniaks (Muslims). From an early age, Andrić closely observed the customs of the local people. These customs, and the particularities of life in eastern Bosnia, would later be detailed in his works. Andrić made his first friends in Višegrad, playing with them along the Drina River and the town's famous Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge. Primary and secondary education At age six, Andrić began primary school. He later recounted that these were the happiest days of his life. At the age of ten, he received a three-year scholarship from a Croat cultural group called Napredak (Progress) to study in Sarajevo. In the autumn of 1902, he was registered at the Great Sarajevo Gymnasium (Serbo-Croatian: Velika Sarajevska gimnazija), the oldest secondary school in Bosnia. While in Sarajevo, Andrić lived with his mother, who worked in a rug factory. At the time, the city was overflowing with civil servants from all parts of Austria-Hungary, and thus many languages could be heard in its restaurants, cafés and on its streets. Culturally, the city boasted a strong Germanic element, and the curriculum in educational institutions was designed to reflect this. From a total of 83 teachers that worked at Andrić's school over a twenty-year period, only three were natives of Bosnia and Herzegovina. "The teaching program," biographer Celia Hawkesworth notes, "was devoted to producing dedicated supporters of the [Habsburg] Monarchy". Andrić disapproved. "All that came ... at secondary school and university," he wrote, "was rough, crude, automatic, without concern, faith, humanity, warmth or love." Andrić experienced difficulty in his studies, finding mathematics particularly challenging, and had to repeat the sixth grade. For a time, he lost his scholarship due to poor grades. Hawkesworth attributes Andrić's initial lack of academic success at least partly to his alienation from most of his teachers. Nonetheless, he excelled in languages, particularly Latin, Greek and German. Although he initially showed substantial interest in natural sciences, he later began focusing on literature, likely under the influence of his two Croat instructors, writer and politician Đuro Šurmin and poet Tugomir Alaupović. Of all his teachers in Sarajevo, Andrić liked Alaupović best, and the two became lifelong friends. Andrić felt he.... Discover the Ivo Andric popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ivo Andric books.