For those of you out there interested in multicultural children's literature in English, I will start a series of posts introducing English translations of children's books from the Balkans. Working on my PhD made me aware how difficult it is to find information on the net about children's books from this part of the world. This is my attempt to bridge that gap.
I decided to start with the book which just reached me by post, generously sent to Hong Kong directly from Podgorica by Mr Dragan Djurišić. Djurišić is himself a very famous Montenegrin writer, translator and editor of children's literature, and he is the editor of
Beauty of All Times, an anthology of children's short stories by Montenegrin authors. The book has been translated into English by Dragan M. Vugdelić. It contains 24 short stories by just as many authors, covering a period from the 1950s to the 1990s. The translator notes that "it is the first of its kind in Montenegro..." and has been published by the Association of Literary Translators of Montenegro in 1995. In his Foreword, Dr. Novo Vuković points out that "realistic stories absolutely dominate this selection... presenting authentic experiences, but from some distant past time and without the attempt to come closer to the viewpoint of the recipient child" (xii-xiii). In line with this conclusion is one of the stories included in the anthology, Radovan Vujadinović's "The Train", based on a true story about a boy who saved a passenger train from crushing into a landslide. The act was proclaimed the "Most Humane Act of the Year". Other authors include: Dušan Kostić, Čedo Vuković, Stevan Bulajić, Vladimir Kuljača, and others, with the only women among them Djordjina Radovojević.
If you are interested to learn more about Montenegrin culture you can check the
Montenegrina portal.
Another anthology of short stories for children comes from Macedonia. Created as part of the 130-book strong Translation Project Macedonian Literature in English funded by the Government of the Republic of Macedonia, it was published in 2011 by the National and University Library St. Clement of Ohrid, Skopje. It is one of the four books in the project devoted to children's literature. The stories for the anthology were selected by Petre Dimovski, and translated into English by yours truly. It contains 68 stories written by 28 authors, covering a period from immediately after World War II, when "Macedonian children's literature had its beginnings" (p.7), up to 2007. As Dimovski points out in his introduction, the stories were selected to correspond with the broad distinction of three periods in the development of the Macedonian children's literature. At the beginning, Macedonian writers for children mostly relied on folklore and legends, with stories of rural life; the second generation of authors for children wrote about childhood experiences from a more lyrical and meditational point of view; and the third group of authors opened up to new horizons, with prevalent urban environments (pp. 11-13). 