Svetolik Ranković (Serbian Cyrillic: Светолик Ранковић; 1863-1899) was a Serbian author most prominent in the period of Realism. As a realist, he was the first Serbian author to take a significant step towards the emancipation of prose from the laws of event-centered narration. He was referred to as the Russian pupil for his elegant style.
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Svetolik Ranković was born at Moštanica, near Belgrade, on the seventh of December 1863. Ranković's preparation for writing lay in the precocious and omnivorous reading of his boyhood -- perhaps stimulated by the example of his scholarly teachers at school. In grammar school he began reading and studying the works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, Turgenev, Gogol, Vladimir Korolenko, in fact, all the Russian greats of that era, which made a lasting impression on him. After graduating from the Seminary of St. Sava in Belgrade and from the presitigious Kiev Theological Academy in 1889, he taught religion in Serbia. He began publishing his works in 1892. His short stories, Pictures From Life, first appeared in 1904; and novels, King of the Forest (1897), Village Schoolmistress (1899) and Wrecked Ideals (1900) deal with the life of the Serbian peasantry and intelligentsia in the late 19th century. The theme of the tragic conflict between man and The Establishment resonates through all his novels. A prominent Serbian realist, Ranković was one of the creators of the psychological novel, deliberately seeking to explore the gloomy side of life. He also translated the works of Leo Tolstoy (Sevastapol Sketches), Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Vladimir Korolenko.
He died at Belgrade on the eighteenth of March 1899, of tuberculosis. He was 35.
Svetolik Ranković tinged his picaroon romances with the spirit of revolt against established moral and political arrangements, like Janko Veselinović. His Jesenje slike (Images of Fall, 1892) fragmented the composition but used sound repetitions and structured the sentences rhythmically. Other notable works include Gorski car (Mountain Tsar) and Seoska uciteljica (Village Schoolmistress). His contemporaries are Veljko M. Milićević, Ivo Ćipiko, Borislav Stanković, Petar Kočić, Simo Matavulj, Radoje Domanović, Milorad J. Mitrović (poet), Stevan Sremac, Laza Kostić and others.
Jovan Skerlić. Istorija Nove Srpske Književnosti / A History of New Serbian Literature (Belgrade, 1914, 1921), pages 395-397.