Izabrane pripovetke

by Laza Lazarević

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1899

About the author

Laza K. Lazarević (Serbian Cyrillic: Лаза К. Лазаревић, May 1, 1851-January 10, 1891) was Serbian writer and psychiatrist.

He was born in Šabac, in a trader family, where he finished primary and lower high school. In 1865 he studied at the Belgrade Higher School and then Law in Belgrade. With help of the country he leaves to Berlin to study medicine. After he finished the studies he became specialist doctor of the General State Hospital in Belgrade. Since then to his death, Lazarević worked on organisation of Serbian medicine as a primarius. He was a member of the Serbian Learned Society and SANU, doctor in 1876-1878 wars, major, organiser of the large reserve hospital in Niš during the Serbian-Bulgarian war (1885), vice-colonel, writer and translator and medicine scientist (published 22 works in local and foreign magazines). He founded t first modern geriatric hospital was founded in Belgrade, Serbia in 1881. His works are translated in numerous languages. He died in Belgrade as personal doctor of king Milan Obrenović IV.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best-known collection of stories/short fiction/fables by the Serbian doctor, scientist, and author, Laza Lazarević. Often surprisingly top-heavy yet also expectedly lyrical in his prose, the heavy-handed approach to preaching a return to traditional values (which, for his own time would have been what? the values of the 1700s?) by Dr. Lazarević wears thin faster than I would have liked. Still, his work is important in the study of Servian literature and also good reading—if read in Serbian—to prepare oneself to read primary sources from the later 1800s in Serbian. Dr. Lazarević's contributions to the greater development of Serbian intellectual life cannot be overestimated, yet his work strikes me as not only hight over-wrought and nostalgic but at that a nostalgia for a past that never quite was . . . if you are expecting the Céline of Serbia, don't exactly, but his work still has its ample merits.