SOURCE: Mukerji, Vanita Singh. “The Theme of Money in The Spinster.” In Ivo Andrić: A Critical Biography, pp. 109-22. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, Inc., 1990.

In the following excerpt, Mukerji examines The Spinster as a “study of miserliness.”

Money circulates in all that people create and obtain, invisibly like the circulation of blood in the body, but crucially for a person and all that is human. It gives people and objects an appearance and significance, and determines life and continuance in all. It supports some in life and elevates them and so they diverge and flourish, but it spoils others and so they dry up and die like withered trees.

—Andrić, “Panorama”¹

Set partly in Sarajevo and partly in Belgrade between the turn of the last century and the 1930s, The Spinster highlights individual and social attitudes to wealth, the opportunities it presents and the use to...