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About this product
Product Identifiers
PublisherNorthwestern University Press
ISBN-100810112965
ISBN-139780810112964
eBay Product ID (ePID)172210
Product Key Features
Book TitleDeath and the Dervish
Number of Pages470 Pages
LanguageEnglish
Publication Year1996
TopicGeneral, Literary, Historical
GenreFiction
AuthorMesa Selimovic
Book SeriesWritings from an Unbound Europe Ser.
FormatHardcover
Dimensions
Item Height1 in
Item Weight17.6 Oz
Item Length8.2 in
Item Width5 in
Additional Product Features
Intended AudienceTrade
LCCN96-017300
Dewey Edition20
Reviews"If there is any alternative to the bleak despair that permeates Death and the Dervish, it could be found in the solidarity and love between members of a family and friends. This simple message is timely, and badly needed in Bosnia today." -- World Literature Today, "A famous novel...that generates enormous power--worthy of comparison with Selimovic's great countryman and forerunner Ivo Andric." -- Kirkus, "Speaks to contemporary readers with all the force of their twentieth-century sufferings and travails...a writer with a broad, tolerant orientation." -- World Literature Today, "A famous novel...that generates enormous power--worthy of comparison with Selimovic's great countryman and forerunner Ivo Andric." -- Kirkus "Selimovic portrays a man hopelessly out of touch with himself and others, viciously in need of being right, secretly coveting power for himself. Groveling before authority, he knowingly betrays innocent people, yet rationalizes everything with perverted interpretations of the Koran. His brother's death, towards the beginning of the novel, and the near-destruction of the community's purest and most generous soul, by the end, enclose a tortuous psychological exposition of the perils of delusion and the ease with which fear destroys the most unyielding moral good." -- Publishers Weekly
Dewey Decimal891.8
SynopsisDeath and the Dervish is an acclaimed novel by Bosnian writer Mesa Selimovic. It recounts the story of Sheikh Nuruddin, a dervish residing in an Islamic monastery in Sarajevo in the eighteenth century during the Ottoman Turk hegemony over the Balkans. When his brother is arrested, he must descend into the Kafkaesque world of the Ottoman authorities in his search to discover what happened to him. He narrates his story in the form of an elaborate suicide note, regularly misquoting the Koran. In time, he begins to question his relations with society as a whole and, eventually, his life choices in general. Hugely successful when published in the 1960s, Death and the Dervish is an enduring classic made into a feature length film in 1974., Sheikh Nuruddin is a dervish at a Sarajevo monastery in the eighteenth century during the Turkish occupation. When his brother is arrested, he descends into the Kafkaesque world of the Turkish authorities in order to find out what has happened. As he does so, he begins to question his relations with society as a whole and, eventually, his life choices in general. Hugely successful when published in the 1960s, Death and the Dervish appears here in its first English translation.
LC Classification NumberPG1419.29.E43D413
