Ivo Vojnovic was born on 9 October 1857 in Dubrovnik, the old Ragusa on the Adriatic coast, and all his life he felt a strong attachment to this city, its history as an independent republic, and its patriciate, to which he and his brother Lujo claimed to belong, although they actually did not. The Vojnovices were an old Serbian noble family, some of whose members moved to Russia, where they received the title of count. Vojnovic's great-grandfather Djordje was, as a Russian major, involved in the Russian-French-Austrian conflict in the Adriatic (1802-1813) and settled in the region. His father, Konstantin (Kosto), lived in Dubrovnik and turned Catholic; in 1855 he married Maria Serragli, whose grandfather had settled in Dubrovnik from Italy and whose father was knighted by Austria. A year after his birth the family moved to Split, where his father opened a law office; he was an active publicist and...