Herzegovina`s Literary Portrait in Alija Nametak`s and Almin Kaplan`s Prose Work

Abstract

Alija Nametak and Almin Kaplan are two writers of Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature. Their prose work is defined by two separate historical periods. Alija Nametak`s prose originated in the 1930s, retaining a realistic poetic framework of storytelling and thematically entering into historical strife, folklore, and social relations amalgamated into the patriarchal way of life of Bosniak rural communities in Herzegovina. On the other hand, Almin Kaplan creates in the cultural climate of the first decades of the 21st century, combining poetic and prose expression in his literary work. Kaplan's literary world built on post-war actuality realistically depicts Bosnian society and convincingly portrays a man sandwiched between the magma of dreams and harsh reality, at the crossroads of personal and collective values, in a time of economic transition, unemployment, broken ethical values, and new globalist movements, but still burdened by the war trauma of the 1990s. Although they are separated by almost the whole century, Alija Nametak and Almin Kaplan can be connected by certain similarities that will be the backbone of this research: woven into the Herzegovinian ambiance with all its geographical, historical, social, and cultural conditions, both draw their literary motifs from the socio-cultural landscape of Herzegovina, which is a stage for small human stories and universal truths. The research corpus of this paper will be based on the novel Meho (2019) and the collection of short stories Dubravske priče (2020) by Almin Kaplan and several short stories from the collection Trava zaboravka (1966/1998) by Alija Nametak.