Biography

Borisav "Bora" Stanković (Serbian Cyrillic: Борисав "Бора" Станковић; 31 March 1876 – 22 October 1927) was a Serbian writer belonging to the school of realism. His novels and short stories depict the life of people from South Serbia. He belongs to an exceptional group of storytellers that appeared at the turn of the 20th century, Ivo Ćipiko, Petar Kočić, Milutin Uskoković, and others. He completed the primary and secondary school in Vranje, and graduated from the University of Belgrade's Law School. It is said that he received some Western education—Paris—but returned unaffected to his native soil and subsequently immortalized it in his work. He worked as a clerk (first customs official then tax official) in Belgrade. During World War I he resided in Niš, then in Montenegro where he was captured by the Austrians and incarcerated in a PoW camp in Derventa in Bosnia. After returning to Belgrade from internment, at the invitation of the Croatian writer Milan Ogrizović, he agreed to write literary feuilletons for the occupation newspaper Beogradske Novine. After the war he worked in the Department of Arts of the Ministry of Education. He died at Belgrade in 1927.