Death and the Dervish

by Meša Selimović

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810112973
• ISBN13: 9780810112971
• Release Date: August 1996
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Length: 473 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 4.6" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

this is a great book

I think it is wrong to trivialize this book with arguements about Selimovic's nationality. It would be a shame, if we were defined simply by our race, ethnicity, or religion. I hope we all agree that is wrong to define (and confine) a person, or person's work, within the limits of political and geographical boundaries. Selimovic's novel was not meant to be a confirmation of Bosnian "greatness," merely because it was written by a Bosnian. I tend to believe that he had other, deeper, and more spiritual motives in his writing. I certainly gained much from reading this book, and I am a serb.

If God were to punish every evil deed...

This book contains a lot. It is by no means easily read - it feels like the private reflections of a tormented man - but I've read few books, if any, that go deeper into some rather dark and unpleasant territory. Through the friendship of a man who has retreated from the world and one who has chosen to confront it, it explores the distance between ideals and reality. One thing that struck me was the universality of the writing; despite being grounded in a very particular place and time, the ideas seemed in no way constrained by the society in which it was based. For this reason the discussion in these reviews on Selimovic's national affiliations - or lack of the same - took me by surprise. I lack the knowledge to contribute to this discussion, but the passage in pp.407-9 where Hassan likens the Bosnian people to Jemail read very much like an author's message.Irrespective of this, I can't recommend the book enough. It offers some powerful insights into areas rarely explored successfully.

From Selimovic's Tuzla

After all of these reviews that I have just found here, there is no sense of talking about the characters of this great book, but I would like to write some things that maybe not all readers know. Mesa Selimovic was born in Tuzla, Bosnien and Herzegovina, same like me. My high-school name was Mesa Selimovic and I am very proud of it. The messages from "Dervis i smrt" are universal, but they are also the picture of bosnian tradition and society, and the most important fact - they represent the mirror of bosnian soul. If you want to learn something more about Bosnia, its people and history, than you should read this book. As a Bosnian I can't think of a better book. And I don't think that it's bad to say that Selimovic was Bosnian (according to Mazedonian reader ), because he was. It was not mentioned in the review was he a Croat, Muslim, or Serb, and it doesn't matter. I think that we after all that happened in my homeland at least have right to say that we are Bosnians without mentioning the nationality. Bosnia is home for all of us. Don't denial this right to Selimovic.

Great because so different.

Few days ago I finished my fourth reading of this book and I experienced exactly the same mixed feelings I had after my first reading.I was sad to witness such a human tragedy and I was happy because in this book I found a real treausure of human mind. Even though located in the Balkans dark age the story still sends a universal human mesagge where philosophical exsistence of good and evil live in eternal confrontation. The final sentence (...death is nonsense,the same as life) rather than lament sounds to me as an invitation for reflection about our existentialism and values we blindly follow and promote today. Finally, with all respect to the people who translated the book I find myself extremely lucky being able to read this book in its original version in bosnian language which is obviouslu much more authentic and colourful. P.S. I would not like to open a political debate in this place but I found the Cyprys' reader final comment about Selimovic's "Serb's" background extremely offensive, inaccurate and inappropriate. By the way, the biographic data about Selimovic, that I as a Bosnian know , are completely different but I have no intention to place his genius in a shadow of political triviality.

"Fear is flooding over me like water." -from the novel

Human transformation is one of the great motifs of modern literature. A particularly important example of such transformation is the development of willpower in a character, such that he overcomes whatever potent inner forces had previously restrained his actions. Examples of this abound: think of such characters as Hamlet, Stephen Dedalus, and Raskolnikov. "Death and the Dervish" describes one such personal revolution, told from the perspective of the narrator, Ahmed Nuruddin, a sheikh at a tekke (a Muslim monastery) in Turk-occupied Bosnia. Nuruddin is a simple, contempletive, and wise character, akin to Alyosha Karamazov, whose asceticism is shattered by the mysterious and unexplained arrest and execution of his brother. Through the novel, Nuruddin broods in regret, lamenting that he might have missed an opportunity to save his brother's life. Finally, in an existential revenge scene of monumental drama and terrifying meaning, Nuruddin overcomes the restraints of his ascetic psyche and avenges his brother's death. The book ends in an unpredictable yet inevitable moment of horror--a horror so beautiful and exquisite that I had to reread the final paragraphs several times before the chills left my back. The profound message of "Death in the Dervish" is existential at a certain level, in that it strips the characters of essential meaning and allows them to define themselves. The non-existential underlying theme, however, which frighteningly explains many events of the twentieth century, is the notion that humans are inherently evil. Not good, as a theist would believe. Not neutral as an existentialist would argue. But evil. It is only our cowardice, our philosophical pusilanimity that restrains us from acting upon the evil that simmers in our minds and constantly threatens to erupt. Selimovic weaves "Death and the Dervish" in simple and lavishly beautiful language, reminding me of Yukio Mishima and Rainer Maria Rilke. He also writes with constant psychological profundity, never letting the reader escape Nuruddin's own inner Odyssey. It would be trite and limiting to call "Death and the Dervish" a "classic." It is a book that all people on earth should read, and a book that continues to move me long after having closed its cover.