Serbian man of Letter, Dobrica Cosic, Dies

Dobrica Cosic’s family confirmed on Sunday that the famous and often controversial Serbian writer, academic and politician had died in his sleep.

Born in the village of Velika Drenova, near Trstenik, central Serbia, in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in December 29, 1921, Cosic joined a Communist youth organization as a youngster before the Second World War, subsequently fighting with Josip Tito's Partisan forces during the Second World War.

The years of the Second World War served as the inspiration for his novels, "Daleko je sunce" ("Far Away Is the Sun"), and "Deobe", (“Divisions”), while his novel "Koreni" (“Roots”) deals with Serbia's war of independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century.

As a writer, Cosic twice won the prestigious NIN award for literature.

As a member of the Central Committee of the League of Communists and of the government, he was initially close the late Yugoslav leader, Tito.

But in the 1960s, a growing feeling of Serbian nationalism distanced him from Tito and from his concept of Yugoslavia as a federation of six equal republics. 

Like many Serbs, he felt Serbian interests in Yugoslavia were being marginalised as the Yugoslav state became more decentralized. From then on, he became a well-known dissident.

After Tito’s death in 1980, he became ever more outspoken, especially about the cause of the Serbs in Kosovo.

In the Serbian Academy for Sciences and Arts he was an influential figure and was also one of the signatories of the notorious Memorandum, published in 1986, which demanded the recentralisation of Yugoslavia and accused both Croats and Albanians of committing a form of silent genocide against the Serbs in Kosovo and...