David Albahari
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Albahari (born 1948 in Peć, Serbia) is a Serbian writer of Jewish origin residing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Albahari writes mainly novels and short stories which are usually autobiographical. He is also an established translator from English into Serbian. He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
He 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 Andric's award. In 1991 he became the chair of the Federation of Jewish Communes of Yugoslavia, and worked on evacuation of the Jewish population from 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 eighties, Albahari initiated the first formal petition to legalize marijuana in Yugoslavia.
His books were translated into several languages and five of them are available in English: Words Are Something Else (1996), Tsing (1997), Bait (2001), Gotz and Meyer (2003, UK) (2005, US) and Snow Man (2005).
