KINDNESS, PRIDE AND PREDICAMENT: BOSNIAKS IN THE NARRATIVE OF ALIJA NAMETAK

Abstract

UDK: 821.163.4(497.6=163.43)-32.09

This article presents an interpretation of stories written by Alija Nametak, one of the most significant Bosniak authors from the period between the two world wars. It also deals with theoretical backgrounds of cultural recollection, new historicism, and cultural materialism. His narrative illustrates Bosnia and Bosniaks in space and time within different frameworks of varying empyreal and governmental rules during the first half of the 20^th century when the country was facing changes induced by the phenomenon of Europeanization, nationalization, agricultural reform, as well as political and national marginalization, prosecution and annihilation. Alija Nametak’s literary work is of great significance for the cultural awareness of Bosniaks, however, the communist government in Yugoslavia imprisoned this author immediately after the Second World War and sentenced him to fifteen years. His works were banished from the literary canon and Bosniaks were condemned to oblivion and extinction.