DIVAN · Genres
Short story
36 published works. Explore books by literary genre and discover new works.
A Flower at the Crossroads
A Flower at the Crossroads — Antun Gustav Matoš. A traveller lies down beside a neglected fountain. He has eaten, drunk, and found a patch of moss on which to rest. These ordinary acts open a landscape where sunlight softens stone, flowers sing, and the blue sky rustles like silk.
Antun Gustav MatošShort storyeBook · AudiobookA Modern Uprising
A Modern Uprising — Radoje Domanović. A dream carries the narrator a century backwards, but the people and institutions he finds are those of his own day. Ottoman rule and modern bureaucracy occupy the same streets. This deliberate mismatch turns a historical question, how a people might rise against oppression, into an examination of habits that make action endlessly postponable.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookAt the Well
At the Well — Laza Lazarević. A flask hangs from a plum tree for any passer-by to drink from. This small act of hospitality introduces a household so large that the narrator compares it to an army. Its work is shared, its welcome elaborate, and its hierarchy almost unquestioned. Into that order comes Anoka, a young bride accustomed to having her own way.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBookBig Phil
Big Phil — Simo Matavulj. A hungry Dalmatian peasant refuses to abandon his faith in exchange for relief. Matavulj links poverty and personal dignity with a painful moment of compassion for the man’s donkey.
Simo MatavuljShort storyeBook · AudiobookCamao
Camao — Antun Gustav Matoš. The pianist Alfred Kamenski arrives in Geneva after years of wandering through Europe. His gifts open the doors of drawing rooms, but bring him neither peace nor a sense of belonging. Matoš’s story follows his encounter with Fanny, a woman he seems to have known even before seeing her. Music, memory and desire alter the outlines of their world.
Antun Gustav MatošHorroreBook · AudiobookHe Knows Everything!
He Knows Everything! — Laza Lazarević. The boy who frightens his schoolmates fears only his elder brother. From that small contradiction Lazarević builds a story about affection that has trouble speaking its own name. Vučko's recklessness is almost a public institution; Vidak's authority seems equally settled. Yet the narrator's cheerful recollections keep disturbing the labels he puts on people.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBookI Do Not Understand
I Do Not Understand — Radoje Domanović. The narrator wants to become a soldier. He imagines that patriotic enthusiasm will open the barracks doors and earn him a warm welcome. Instead, his living presence becomes a problem for a military administration whose records say otherwise.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookIn a Village Inn
In a Village Inn — Radoje Domanović. A traveller caught in a winter storm finds shelter in a village inn. At first the place seems to promise warmth, food and company. The conversations he overhears gradually reveal how the village is governed, how its leisure is paid for, and whose labour keeps everyone else comfortable.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookIn the Night
In the Night — Borisav Stanković. In In the Night, the ordinary work of irrigating tobacco opens a space for everything Cveta tries to suppress. As she waits for the water, an encounter and a song restore the love that her social world would not allow. The field is more than a setting: the sound of a hoe, the thirst of the earth, moonlight and distant voices all enter into her remembering.
Borisav StankovićShort storyeBookInto the Mire
Into the Mire — Vjenceslav Novak. A prosperous student in Zagreb encounters talented young men struggling to afford food, rooms and education. Novak tests his conscience against the unfair distribution of support.
Vjenceslav NovakShort storyeBook · AudiobookIvko’s Slava
Ivko’s Slava — Stevan Sremac. A house prepared for one feast becomes the centre of a town that will not stop celebrating. Ivko the quilt-maker has saved his best food and drink for his slava, the annual observance of his family’s patron saint. He knows the duties of a good host and takes pride in meeting them. His friends know those duties too. The comedy begins when they discover how much can be demanded in the name of friendship, custom and one more glass.
Stevan SremacShort storyeBookJablan
Jablan — Petar Kočić. Lujo waits for tomorrow as if his whole world depends on it. His bull, Jablan, is to face the imperial bull Rudonja. Beginning with a child's tenderness towards an animal, the story follows his wavering fear and pride into the clamour of a public contest. The village at rest beneath the moon and the sudden crash of horns belong to the same mountain life.
Petar KočićShort storyeBook · AudiobookKanjoš Macedonović
Kanjoš Macedonović — Stjepan Mitrov Ljubiša. Kanjoš goes to Venice as a merchant and returns with a commission better suited to a hero of epic poetry. Yet Ljubiša’s tale is in no hurry to reach the duel. First it takes us through waiting rooms, customs demands and polished speeches, then back to the Paštrovići, where the cost of protection and freedom is debated without ceremony. The small man must confront both a giant and other people’s ideas of what a hero should look like.
Stjepan Mitrov LjubišaShort storyeBook · AudiobookMy First Morning Service with Father
My First Morning Service with Father — Laza Lazarević. A son recalls the night his father's gambling brought the family to ruin. His mother's courage and tenderness restore hope as the church bells announce morning prayers. This complete English translation adapts character names while retaining the Serbian setting and customs.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBookMy Friend Lovro
My Friend Lovro — August Šenoa. Rain cancels a country-house vintage party, and conversation settles into the safe topics of respectable company: politics, fruit trees, household work. A young widow refuses to be entertained. She is bored by Croatian stories, she says, because their little world produces only little events.
August ŠenoaShort storyeBook · AudiobookNo Escape
No Escape — Radoje Domanović. Every editor in Nigde spasa (No Escape) has only a small request. An article on vines, a contribution on raising foals, a brief patriotic story: surely an educated writer can oblige. Their courtesy makes refusal harder, and the narrator’s attempt to find a subject becomes more oppressive than the work itself. What begins with a ruined afternoon grows into a pursuit through streets, shops and finally the countryside.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookPoor Girl
Poor Girl — Simo Matavulj. A sailor returns to a Dalmatian island with a ring, unaware that the woman he loves has died. Matavulj quietly traces hidden affection, grief and a family’s continuing daily life.
Simo MatavuljShort storyeBook · AudiobookPrince Marko Among the Serbs Again
Prince Marko Among the Serbs Again — Radoje Domanović. What happens when a nation gets the hero it keeps asking for? Domanović gives the question an embarrassingly literal answer. Prince Marko, exhausted by centuries of appeals to rise from the grave, obtains permission to return.
Radoje DomanovićSatireeBook · AudiobookStories
Stories — Janko Leskovar. Leskovar’s stories follow people troubled by memories, doubts and unspoken desires. The collection opens with a schoolmaster’s restless inner life in “A Thought of Eternity”.
Janko LeskovarShort story collectioneBook · AudiobookThe Abolition of Passions
The Abolition of Passions — Radoje Domanović. A country has ten good men and a population seething with dangerous passions. Reading newspapers, building schools, helping the poor and buying flowers all appear in its catalogue of misconduct. Domanović lets the accusations accumulate in the sober language of official reports until ordinary civic life itself looks like a conspiracy.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe Alka Rider
The Alka Rider — Dinko Šimunović. In Dinko Šimunović’s Alkar, the landscape is no passive background to human events. Summer heat, blue haze, the rumble of hooves and the storm wind gradually acquire the force of feelings the characters find hard to express. The Cetina countryside appears peaceful, while its image of its own past is renewed each year in the alka tournament. The story follows what happens when that shared measure of heroism enters the most intimate relationships.
Dinko ŠimunovićShort storyeBookThe Brand
The Brand — Radoje Domanović. A man who bows to a police uniform's discarded button is an unusual guide to a dream. Yet the narrator of The Brand offers this incident as proof of his good character. Before he reaches the strange country where most of the story takes place, his own account has already made obedience look involuntary: hand, head and mouth salute almost without consulting their owner.
Radoje DomanovićSatireeBook · AudiobookThe Dead Man’s Wife
The Dead Man’s Wife — Borisav Stanković. Anica begins this story almost without a name. She is a widow visiting a grave, a mother leading a child, someone recognised through the man to whom she belonged. Only after following her from the cemetery into the streets and back behind her gate does the narrative name her.
Borisav StankovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe Dead Sea
The Dead Sea — Radoje Domanović. The narrator begins with his anxious aunt, a woman capable of discovering mortal danger in a stone, a meal or a trip to church. Her solicitous voice becomes the starting point of a much larger inquiry: what happens when caution ceases to protect life and instead prevents it from being lived? Schoolroom lessons, political procedure and everyday conversation gradually acquire the same stifling rhythm.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe Leader
The Leader — Radoje Domanović. The Leader is a satirical short story about people who leave a barren homeland in the hope of finding a better life. They choose an unknown man to guide them, taking his silence as proof of wisdom. Domanović follows the process by which ordinary hope becomes unconditional obedience, and a community learns to justify each new disaster.
Radoje DomanovićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe Marriage of Peter Carrington
The Marriage of Peter Carrington — Svetozar Ćorović. Peter Carrington’s friends send him on a search for a wife, leading him into one comic entanglement after another. Ćorović brings vanity, friendship and small-town life into the marriage quest.
Svetozar ĆorovićNoveleBook · AudiobookThe People Will Gild It All
The People Will Gild It All — Laza Lazarević. Two men wait for an overdue steamboat on the Sava. Blagoje the coppersmith expects his son home from the war; Captain Tanasije Jeličić is waiting for his wife. For each, the boat’s arrival promises an answer to questions he can scarcely bear any longer. Conversation, silence, memories and mistaken sounds fill the hours.
Laza LazarevićShort storyeBook · AudiobookThe Rainbow
The Rainbow — Dinko Šimunović. The first sentence of Duga places a town between a river and a wall of cliffs. Almost at once that landscape becomes a measure of freedom. While the adults of Čardaci sleep through the heat and their daughters wait indoors, the boys have the river, the meadows and the sun. Ten-year-old Srna hears that larger world through an open window. Her parents call their restrictions care; her body experiences them as confinement.
Dinko ŠimunovićShort storyeBook