SOURCE: Hawkesworth, Celia. “Short Stories.” In Ivo Andrić: Bridge between East and West, pp. 68-122. Dover, N.H.: Athlone Press, 1984.

In the following excerpt, Hawkesworth looks beyond the apparent objectivity in Andrić's short stories to discover the writer's subtle insertion of his own individuality in his narratives.

(i) 1920-41

After the personal, confessional nature of the early prose poems, the first impression conveyed by Andrić's short stories is of their objectivity. Andrić as an individual, with a particular life's path and experience, is remarkably absent from his prose fiction. But this objectivity is only on the surface. The many characters and situations portrayed all tend to illustrate those fundamental facts of human existence with which Andrić is concerned in his verse. The extent to which all his works are indeed part of one and the same work becomes clear as the symbolic quality of the stories...