The Star of David
Zuvdija Hodžić was born on 1 August 1943 in Gusinje. He graduated at the Faculty of Philology in Priština.
He published a book of poetry Na prvom konaku (1970), a collection of short stories Gluva zvona (1973) and Neko zove (2003), novels Gusinjska godina (1976) and Davidova zvijezda (1993), a book of travel writings and reportages Jedan dan života (1995), a book of essays To je to (2013) and a monograph of drawings and notes Podgoricom starom (1999) and Otkrivanje zavičaja: crteži Plava i Gusinja (2003).
He has received numerous awards and honors, including the July 13th Award (2005), thre Award “Pero Camila Sijarica” (2011), the award “Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša” (2015)…
His literary work was translated into several foreign languages and is presented in numerous anthologies of Montenegrin and Bosnian literature.
He is the Secretary-General of the Montenegrin PEN Centre, member of the Duklja Academy of Sciences and Arts and an associate member of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts.
The novel Davidova zvijezda – The Star of David written by Zuvdija Hodžić brought to the Montenegrin literature a spirit of oriental storytelling, incorporated in the model of postmodernist historiography meta-fiction. These two narrative models form a peculiar narrative process, based on the fragmentary narrative threads unified by the universal theme of human destiny at the border of different worlds, civilizations and eras.
The main character of the novel, David Šahan, a chronicler of the border who puts together the parts of biography of a Jewish mystic of the 19th century Šabetaj Cvijo, whose life ended in Ulcinj. Reconstructing the fate of Šabetaj Cvijo, and reviving the numerous episodes of life on the border and moving along the narrative broad stage from Prokletije to Baghdad, he encounters the history embodied in a traumatic historical episode of the Informbiro Resolution and its consequences for the lives of people from the border. The Hodžić’s novel, assimilating a diverse narrative traditions, gets close to the poetics of magical realism and thus, as a rare achievement of the contemporary Montenegrin literature, blends into the recent trends of world literature.