Enver Čolaković

Bosnian writer

Enver Čolaković (27 May 1913 – 18 August 1976) was a Bosnian novelist, poet and translator, best known for his 1944 novel The Legend of Ali Pasha. During the later stages of World War II he served as a cultural attaché to the Independent State of Croatia embassy in Budapest. After the war he spent the rest of his life in Zagreb, where he published a number of literary translations from Hungarian and German.

Born in Budapest in 1913 to Muslim father Vejsil beg Čolaković and Hungarian mother Ilona (née Mednyanszki), Čolaković spent his childhood traveling around the region, and after World War I he settled in Sarajevo. He was a student of physics and mathematics in Budapest and history in Zagreb. Between 1931 and 1939, Čolaković wrote in the Hungarian and German languages. Between 1939 and 1941, his works were published by a number of magazines based in Sarajevo and Zagreb, such as Osvit (Dawn), Hrvatski misao (The Croatian Thought), Hrvatski narod (The Croatian People), Hrvatsko kolo (The Croatian Circuit) and Novi behar (The New Blossom). Čolaković also wrote a series of essays and reviews in which he advocated rights for Bosniaks. and Austrian authors, he was awarded the Hungarian Petőfi Award and the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 1970. He translated the novels of Ervin Šinko and Gyula Illyés, Zoltán Kodály's oratorio Psalmus Hungaricus and Richard Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Together with his wife Stella Čolaković he also created many classical music programs for radio broadcast. Čolaković was member of Matica hrvatska, Croatian Writers' Association, the Association of Literary Translators and the Yugoslav branch of the International PEN.