Peti prst

by Miodrag Bulatović

213 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Miodrag Bulatović was a Serbian novelist and playwright. He began in 1956 with a book of short stories, Đavoli dolaze ("The Devils Are Coming", translated as Stop the Danube), for which he received the Serbian Writers Union Award. His best novel was, however, The Red Rooster Flies Heavenwards, set in his homeland of north-eastern Montenegro. This was translated into more than twenty foreign languages. Bulatović then stopped publishing for a time, to protest interference in his work. His next novel, Hero on a Donkey was first published abroad and only four years later (1967) in Yugoslavia. In 1975, he won the prestigious NIN Award for novel of the year for People with Four Fingers, an insight into the émigré's life. The Fifth Finger was a sequel to that book. His last novel was Gullo Gullo, which brought together various themes from his previous books.

Bulatović was known "for his fierce Serbian nationalism, which earned him the enmity of other ethnic groups in Yugoslavia, and he was an official of Serbia's Socialist Party." His candidature for the President of the Association of Writers of Yugoslavia in 1986 was rejected by Slovenian, Kosovan, Montenegrin and Croatian branches of the Association contributing to the subsequent dissolution of the Association in 1989.