Antun Gustav Matos was an important and controversial Croatian modernist writer whose work participated in the sense of turmoil and change that swept across turn-of-the-century Europe. Partially due to the unsettled and contradictory times in which he lived and partially because of his own disposition, Matos's work is distinguished by a remarkable range of attitudes and opinions on a variety of issues. He maintained a belief in the power of laughter and a consistently ironic attitude toward his own life and work, but he never lost sight of the importance of his task. Matos was an intellectual and a writer who sought to introduce European standards into Croatian culture and literature, and his work had considerable influence on later Croatian and Serbian writers of the twentieth century.

He wrote in a variety of genres, including poems, short stories, and essays; literary and theater criticism; travel books; commentaries on...