Grozdana Olujić ( sr-cyr, Гроздана Олујић, 30 August 1934 – 16 March 2019) was a
Serbia
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n writer, translator, editor and critic. Her novels and fairy tales collections have been translated in more than 35 languages. Her awards include the Andrić Award, Zmaj Children Games Award, and Bora Stanković Award.
Biography
Olujić graduated and received a master's degree in English and English literature at the
Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade. Her first novel, ''Walk to Heaven'' (''Izlet u nebo'') was released in 1958, when the writer was 24 years old. The book became a bestseller and was translated into several European languages and received an award of Narodna prosvjeta publishing house for the best novel of Yugoslavia. The novel was adapted for the stage, and in 1962, based on the book, the film director Jovan Živanović shot the melodrama ''Čudna devojka''.
The novels ''Vote for love'' (''Glasam za ljubav''), ''Do not wake a sleeping dog'' (''Ne budi zaspale pse'') and ''Wild seed'' (''Divlje seme'') published in the 60s approved Grozdana Olujić as one of the leading authors of Yugoslav literature. Wild seed won favourable critics and was highly prized in USA and became obligatory literature at several universities.
The novel ''The Game'' (''Igra'') from the collection ''African Violet'' (''Afrička ljubičica''), published in 1985, received the main prize of an international competition in
Arnsberg
Arnsberg (; ) is a town in the Hochsauerland county, in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is the location of the Regierungsbezirk Arnsberg (region), Arnsberg administration and one of the three local administration offices of the Ho ...
. Almost all the stories from the collection were translated into foreign languages and included in anthologies of short prose around the world including Germany, USA, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, India, Great Britain, France, etc. In 2009, the writer's novel ''Voices in the Wind'' (''Glasovi u vetru'') became the winner of
NIN Award, the main literary award of Serbia.
Grozdana Olujić is the author of several popular books for children and youth. The collection of fairy tales ''The Magic Broom'' was published in the USSR in 1985 with 100,000 copies.
Olujić also translated a number of works into Serbian; she translated from Polish ''Fairy tales of the southern wind'' by Danuta Cirlić-Straszyńska and works of
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only write ...
,
Amrita Pritam
Amrita Pritam (; 31 August 1919 – 31 October 2005) was an Indian novelist, essayist and poet, who wrote in Punjabi and Hindi. A prominent figure in Punjabi literature, she is the recipient of the 1956 Sahitya Akademi Award. Her body o ...
,
William Kennedy,
Arnold Wesker
Sir Arnold Wesker (24 May 1932 – 12 April 2016) was an English dramatist. He was the author of 50 plays, four volumes of short stories, two volumes of essays, much journalism and a book on the subject, a children's book, some poetry, and ot ...
,
Yukio Mishima
Kimitake Hiraoka ( , ''Hiraoka Kimitake''; 14 January 192525 November 1970), known by his pen name Yukio Mishima ( , ''Mishima Yukio''), was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, Ultranationalism (Japan), ultranationalis ...
and others. She died at 16 March 2019 in Belgrade.
Israeli critic and essayist Dina Katan Ben-Cion, speaking about the novel ''Voice in the Wind'', said that "Only Serbian literature has its
One hundred years of solitude
''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' (, ) is a 1967 in literature, 1967 novel by Colombian people, Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that tells the Family saga, multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio ...
."
Olujić is also known for her essays, including works on
Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of real ...
,
Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Clayton Wolfe (October 3, 1900 – September 15, 1938) was an American novelist and short story writer. He is known largely for his first novel, '' Look Homeward, Angel'' (1929), and for the short fiction that appeared during the last ye ...
,
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( ; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the novel (in French – translated in English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'' and more r ...
,
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device.
Vir ...
and Poetics of fairy tales.
Awards
She was decorated
Order of the Dannebrog
The Order of the Dannebrog () is a Denmark, Danish order of chivalry instituted in 1671 by Christian V of Denmark, Christian V. Until 1808, membership in the Order was limited to fifty members of noble or royal rank, who formed a single cla ...
, made an honorary citizen of
Oslo
Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...
and won numerous awards including the NIN award, the World Congress for Art and Culture for the best modern fairy tale in 1994, the Great Ivo Andrić Award, the Zmaj Children Games Award
and Bora Stanković Award.
Works
*''Izlet u nebo'', 1957.
*''Glasam za ljubav'', 1962.
*''Ne budi zaspale pse'', 1964.
*''Divlje seme'', 1967.
*''Sedefna ruža i druge bajke'', 1979.
*''Nebeska reka i druge bajke'', 1984.
*''Afrička ljubičice'', 1984.
*''Zvezdane lutalice'', 1987.
*''Dečak i princeza'', 1990.
*''Princ oblaka'', 1990.
*''Zlatni tanjir i druge bajke'', 1998.
*''Mesečev cvet'', 1998.
*''Svetlosna vrata'', 2002.
*''Kamen koji je leteo i druge bajke'', 2002.
*''Snežni cvet i druge bajke'', 2004.
*''Jastuk koji je pamtio snove i druge'', 2007.
*''Glasovi u vetru'', 2009.
*''Preživeti do sutra'', 2017.
*''Bili su deca kao i ti'', 2017.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Olujic, Grozdana
1936 births
2019 deaths
People from Erdevik
20th-century Serbian writers
20th-century Serbian women writers
21st-century Serbian women writers
21st-century Serbian writers
External links
www.grozdanaolujic.net