Short stories
Глава шећера
Not translated into English
Milovan Glišić · 1875
Synopsis
Radan Radanović, a blameless peasant, has fallen into debt to the moneylenders of his village, in the days when coins are beginning to settle everything. The district's new captain, Maksim Sarmašević, a handsome man careful of his appearance, arrives flanked by his faithful servant Đuka, and the villagers compare him with his predecessors. One day, the captain asks Radan to buy him a sugarloaf. It is an errand that a peasant does not refuse a captain.
Context
The tale appeared in 1875, when the ideas of Svetozar Marković were turning part of Serbian opinion against the usurers, the petty village exploiters and the district captains who squeezed the countryside: this is the side the author takes. He mixes with social chronicle the superstitions and the popular fantastic, in a plot made of juxtaposed scenes. Belgrade television made a TV film of it in 1991 by Dejan Ćorković, from a screenplay by Jovan Radulović, with Mihailo Janketić in the role of the captain.
Who it is for
A short narrative, in nineteenth-century Serbian. It is best to know what a district captain could demand of a peasant in the Serbia of the time.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the exemplary text of Serbian village realism, it is the first realist short story that secondary school students study.