Mihailo Lalic, author of twelve novels, is one of the greatest Serbian novelists. Although he also wrote poetry, criticism, reportage, travelogues, screenplays, and plays, he acquired his reputation from his novels and short stories. His novels, four of which--Lelejska gora (1957, translated as The Wailing Mountain, 1965), Ratna sreca (War Fortune, 1973), Hajka (Chase, 1960), and Zlo proljece (Evil Spring, 1953)--are of seminal value, honor not only Serbian but European literature.

Lalic was born on 7 October 1914 into a peasant family in Trepca, Montenegro. He lost both parents before he started school. The experience of being a lonely village orphan and the psychological anxiety of being a motherless child left an indelible impression on his sensibility and solidified his determination to direct his literary efforts to the liberation of the socially deprived and, in general, those oppressed and endangered by the cataclysm of war. The writer attended elementary school in his native...