SOURCE: "Between Two Worlds: Andrić the Storyteller," in Review of National Literatures: The Multinational Literature of Yugoslavia, edited by Albert B. Lord, Vol. V, No. 1, Spring, 1974, pp. 112-26.

In the following essay, Loud surveys the major themes of Andric's short fiction

When he accepted the Nobel Prize in literature in 1961, Ivo Andrić took pains to describe himself as a storyteller above all else. Though his international stature at that time, certainly in England and America, was doubtless attributable to the three novels written between 1941 and 1944 at the midpoint in his career, in his native land it was Andrić's work in the short story that had established him as a major writer. Between the wars, his stories appeared at a regular rate of two or three yearly, while their author in the meantime rose in the Yugoslav diplomatic service. They attracted particular attention as studies in psychological excess...