num_pages: 473
description: Death and the Dervish is an acclaimed novel by Bosnian writer Mesa Selimovic. It recounts the story of Sheikh Nuruddin, a dervish residing in an Islamic monastery in Sarajevo in the eighteenth century during the Ottoman Turk hegemony over the Balkans. When his brother is arrested, he must descend into the Kafkaesque world of the Ottoman authorities in his search to discover what happened to him. He narrates his story in the form of an elaborate suicide note, regularly misquoting the Koran. In time, he begins to question his relations with society as a whole and, eventually, his life choices in general. Hugely successful when published in the 1960s, Death and the Dervish is an enduring classic that was made into a feature length film in 1974.
language: English
title: Death and the Dervish
titlecomplete: Death and the Dervish
characters: Ahmed Nuruddin
genres: 20th Century, Literature, Serbian Literature, Historical, Classics, Novels, Philosophy, Religion, Historical Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 9346
places: Sarajevo
awards: awardedAt: 28800000
name: ANVOY Award, awardedAt: -126201600000
name: NIN Prize
publisher: Northwestern University Press