David Albahari

David Albahari (pronounced [dǎv̞id albaxǎri], Serbian Cyrillic: Давид Албахари, born on 15 March 1948[1]) is a Serbian writer, residing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Albahari writes mainly novels and short stories in the Serbian language. He is also an established translator from English into Serbian. He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts[1] and a University of Belgrade graduate.

David Albahari
Albahari in 2011
Born (1948-03-15) 15 March 1948
Peć, PR Serbia, FPR Yugoslavia
OccupationWriter, novelist
NationalitySerbian, Canadian
Alma materUniversity of Belgrade Faculty of Philology

Biography

Born in Peć/Pejë,[1] in the former SFR Yugoslavian region of Kosovo to a Sephardic Jewish family, Albahari published the first collection of short stories "Porodično vreme" (Family Time) in 1973. He became better known to wider audience in 1982 with a volume "Opis smrti" (Description of Death) for which he got Ivo Andrić award. In 1991 he became the chair of the Federation of Jewish Communes of Yugoslavia, and worked on evacuation of the Jewish population from besieged Sarajevo. In 1994, he moved with his family to Calgary in the Canadian province of Alberta, where he still lives. He continues to write and publish in the Serbian language.

In the late 1980s, Albahari initiated the first formal petition to legalize marijuana in Yugoslavia.

Awards

In 2012 he was awarded the Vilenica Prize. He also received the following awards: Ivo Andrić Award (1982), Stanislav Vinaver Award (1993), NIN Prize (1996), National Library of Serbia Award for bestseller (1996), International Balkanika Award (1996), Bridge Berlin Award (1998), City of Belgrade Award (2005) and Isidora Sekulić Award (2014).[1]

On 29 July 2016, Albahari won the first award at the "Druga prikazna" ("Another Story") literary festival in Skopje, Macedonia.[2]

Albahari has been contributing to Geist magazine.

Works

His books have been translated into several languages and eight of them are available in English:

  • Words Are Something Else (1996)
  • Tsing (1997)
  • Bait (2001)
  • Gotz and Meyer (2003, United Kingdom) (2005, United States)
  • Snow Man (2005)
  • Leeches (2011)
  • Globetrotter (2014)
  • Learning Cyrillic (2014)
  • Checkpoint (2018).

References
  1. Biography Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine at SANU official website, retrieved 1-12-2014 (in Serbian)
  2. Давид Албахари - добитник на првата награда „Друга приказна“
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