Novel
The Wailing Mountain
Лелејска гора
Mihailo Lalić · 1957
Synopsis
Montenegro, during the war. Lado Tajović, a student turned partisan, finds himself cut off from the bulk of his comrades and wanders the mountains above the villages of the Lim, first with two companions, soon alone, in a region held by the Chetniks and torn by family feuds. He hides, goes down to find food and clothing, loves a woman whose husband is a prisoner far away, and solitude changes him: he sharpens his senses and dulls them, believes and doubts.
Context
The first version appeared in 1957; the author rewrote the book and gave a second in 1962, which the following year received the first Njegoš Prize. The novel belongs to the cycle of six books the author devoted to the war in Montenegro, from 1950 to 1970, and whose order of publication does not follow the chronology of the action. Zdravko Velimirović made a film of it in 1968, the very year of a Russian translation.
Who it is for
A long novel of introspection, in a language rich in imagery. It is worth knowing that the war in Montenegro was also a civil war, between partisans and Chetniks who came from the same villages.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's most complex and most praised novel, and as one of his three peaks; translated into English as early as 1965.