Margins
Anika book cover
Anika
1931
First Published
4.16
Average Rating
78
Number of Pages

Among the stories published between the wars there are several characters who dominate the tales in which they appear and seem similarly to stand for a whole category of human experience. An example is the heroine of the of the story “Anika's Times“(1931). Anika is a woman who wreaks havoc in Višegrad through the unpredictable distribution of her favours. The impact she made is still spoken of when the story opens, several generations later. Anika is a self-willed creature whose defiancé of convention – flouted initially out of pique with a particular young man – predictably brings her no happiness to the extent that she welcomes the prospect of the inevitable retribution her as a relief for herself and others: “It would be an act of charity of someone would kill me”, she repeats several times before her death. In this way Anika herself is not entirely in control of her destiny, but is the vehicle of an overwhelming power over men. The story of Anika is given an additional dimension in the form of an explanatory introduction the exact meaning of which is perhaps not immediately clear, but emerges from the account of “Anika’s Times”. This introduction describes the growing schizophrenia of the parish priest of a village outside Višegrad and his obsessive, furtive watching of women. As long as the villagers speak of him they tend to be reminded also of Anika. There is only a tenuous connection between her and father Vujadin, so that the association of the two stories in the villagers’ minds seems to suggest a more profound link. Vujadin’s madness is not directly attributable to his experience of women; he has become cut off from his fellow-men by a variety of factors. But as he steadily loses touch with society, women seem to loom ever larger in his consciousness. In this aspect of his madness that seems to disturb the villagers and urge them to give it form in their recollection of the legend of Anika. Within the framework of the story “Anika's Times“, this introduction appears as a kind of meditation on man's perennial need to control and account for his powerful response to woman, the need which led to the creation of the legend of Adam and Eve.

Avg Rating
4.16
Number of Ratings
488
5 STARS
42%
4 STARS
37%
3 STARS
15%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
1%
goodreads

Author

Ivo Andric
Ivo Andric
Author · 34 books

Ivan "Ivo" Andrić (Cyrillic: Иво Андрић) was a Yugoslav and Bosnian novelist, short story writer and Nobel prizewinner. His writings deal mainly with life in his native Bosnia under the Ottoman Empire. His house in Travnik is now a Museum. His Belgrade flat on Andrićev Venac hosts the Museum of Ivo Andrić and the Ivo Andrić Foundation. After the Second World War, he spent most of his time in his Belgrade home, held ceremonial posts in the Communist government of Yugoslavia and was a Bosnia and Herzegovina parliamentarian. He was also a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 1961, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country". He donated the prize money to libraries in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His works include The Bridge on the Drina, Bosnian Chronicle (aka Chronicles of Travnik), and The Woman from Sarajevo. These were written during WW2 while he was living quietly in Belgrade and published in 1945. They are often referred to as the "Bosnian Trilogy" as they were published simultaneously and had been written in the same period. However, they're connected only thematically. Other works include Ex Ponto (1918), Unrest (Nemiri, '20), The Journey of Alija Đerzelez (Put Alije Đerzeleza, 1920), The Vizier's Elephant (Priča o vezirovom slonu, 1948; tr. 1962), The Damned Yard (Prokleta avlija, 1954), and Omer-Pasha Latas (Omerpaša Latas, released posthumously in 1977)

548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved