MUSEUM OF LITERATURE AND PERFORMING ARTS

Founded in 1961, this national museum (Muzej Književnosti i Pozorišne Umjetnosti Bosne i Hercegovine) is housed in a beautiful building with a garden dating from the 19th century and donated to the city by the Despić family. Since 1992, it has been enriched with the Mak Gallery, a room dedicated to the Stolac writer Mehmedalija "Mak" Dizdar (1917- 1971) where exhibitions of paintings and photography are held. The museum itself contains reconstructions of the offices (with furniture and books from the period) of four great authors. First of all, there is the Croatian poet Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević (1865-1908). Known for his social involvement and anti-clericalism, he was notably the editor of the literary magazine Nada published in Sarajevo at the beginning of the 20th century. The Bosnian writer and partisan Hasan Kikić (1905-1942) was the author in 1935 of the novel Provincija u Pozadini ("remote province") and the creator in Zagreb, in 1937, of the magazine Putokaz devoted to Bosnian literature. The Bosnian-Serb poet and parliamentarian Petar Kočić (1877-1916) founded the magazine Otadžbina, which was active against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and wrote a series of short stories about the peasants of the Banja Luka region. Finally, the Sephardic Jewish writer and doctor of Bosnian culture Isak Samokovlija (1889-1955) described the daily life of the small people of the Jewish community of Goražde. One of his works has been translated into French: D'un printemps à l'autre (ed. Payot et Rivages, 1999).