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158 pages
ISBN: 978-09678893-3-7
Weight: 8 ounces
The Deceased is Serbia’s most famous comedy written by it’s best-known comic playwright. Pavle Marić, an architect, is furious with his wife because she is conducting an affair with Milan Novaković, his best friend and business partner. Pavle leaves town to think things over. Weeks later, a deformed corpse is found washed up on the banks of the Danube and is identified to be that of Pavle. The case is judged a suicide. Three years later, Pavle, now “the deceased,” unexpectedly returns. He discovers that his heirs have not only plundered his estate, but also refuse to recognize him as being “legally” alive, and they unite to keep him “dead” to maintain the status quo. This is the first English translation of a masterful and darkly comic play that will enter its rightful place as a classic of world literature. The fluid and natural translation lends itself to theatrical production. Comically absurd, filled with existential angst, it was ahead of its time in 1937. At once vaudevillian and modernist, it is distinguished by clever plotting and stinging dialogue. The play stands as a lasting and caustic satire of human greed, strangely consonant with today’s society.
About the Author
Nušić studied law in Graz and in Belgrade, and participated as a volunteer in the Serbian-Bulgarian War (1885). In 1887, he was sentenced to two years of imprisonment because of an anti-dynastic poem he had written, Two Slaves (Dva Raba), but was granted clemency after having served one year of his sentence. Upon his release, the young rebel was surprised to find himself in financial straits, and ironically enough, was compelled to seek employment with a government agency. Appointed as a civil servant, he was sent to the Serbian consulate in Priština (1889). In November 1936, Nušić suffered a heart attack. Doctors worked around the clock to save his life while newspapers prepared his obituary. Nušić, however, not only pulled through, but went on to write The Deceased (Pokojnik), his greatest play. Shortly before his death on January 19, 1938, Nušić wrote to Stevan Brakus, the manager of the National Theatre in Sarajevo, about the Belgrade premier of The Deceased: “My fate is strange. The Left will not recognize me as a writer, and they say that I am a ‘bourgeois blabbermouth’, a trifler and nothing more; and the Right counts me among the Communists, and I—I am neither part of the Right of the Left. Perhaps that is my mistake.”
158 pages
ISBN: 978-09678893-3-7
Weight: 8 ounces
The Deceased is Serbia’s most famous comedy written by it’s best-known comic playwright. Pavle Marić, an architect, is furious with his wife because she is conducting an affair with Milan Novaković, his best friend and business partner. Pavle leaves town to think things over. Weeks later, a deformed corpse is found washed up on the banks of the Danube and is identified to be that of Pavle. The case is judged a suicide. Three years later, Pavle, now “the deceased,” unexpectedly returns. He discovers that his heirs have not only plundered his estate, but also refuse to recognize him as being “legally” alive, and they unite to keep him “dead” to maintain the status quo. This is the first English translation of a masterful and darkly comic play that will enter its rightful place as a classic of world literature. The fluid and natural translation lends itself to theatrical production. Comically absurd, filled with existential angst, it was ahead of its time in 1937. At once vaudevillian and modernist, it is distinguished by clever plotting and stinging dialogue. The play stands as a lasting and caustic satire of human greed, strangely consonant with today’s society.
About the Author
Nušić studied law in Graz and in Belgrade, and participated as a volunteer in the Serbian-Bulgarian War (1885). In 1887, he was sentenced to two years of imprisonment because of an anti-dynastic poem he had written, Two Slaves (Dva Raba), but was granted clemency after having served one year of his sentence. Upon his release, the young rebel was surprised to find himself in financial straits, and ironically enough, was compelled to seek employment with a government agency. Appointed as a civil servant, he was sent to the Serbian consulate in Priština (1889). In November 1936, Nušić suffered a heart attack. Doctors worked around the clock to save his life while newspapers prepared his obituary. Nušić, however, not only pulled through, but went on to write The Deceased (Pokojnik), his greatest play. Shortly before his death on January 19, 1938, Nušić wrote to Stevan Brakus, the manager of the National Theatre in Sarajevo, about the Belgrade premier of The Deceased: “My fate is strange. The Left will not recognize me as a writer, and they say that I am a ‘bourgeois blabbermouth’, a trifler and nothing more; and the Right counts me among the Communists, and I—I am neither part of the Right of the Left. Perhaps that is my mistake.”