Recognizable even in the Yugoslav frameworks as a master of short stories, with his only novel Putnik – The Traveller, Sreten Asanović enriched the Montenegrin novelistic production with the text made in the best tradition of the picaresque novel. Narrated in the first person, as an autobiographical statement of the main character, the novel Putnik follows the fulfilling life of Božo Živkov Tomović, who in his early age started travelling from Donji Kokoti into the world, reaching Hungary, North and South America, France and Spain, always accompanied by “local” persons and concerns. Finally, at the beginning of World War II, he settles down in Montenegro. In two chronological wholes, Đetinjstvo i mladost and Zaludnja zrelost, in 40 short chapters, Asanović presents an authentic biography of his literary hero, in the period from 1888 to 1939, imbued with the quest for a better life, wars, politics, roads and byways, which are made unusual from a perspective and dealt with a slightly ironic tone, mark a stormy period in the history of Božo’s homeland and its people.
