Two books by writers from Montenegro, set there, that give a real sense of the place: Land Without Justice and The Son.
Montenegro's national poet is Petar II Petrović-Njegoš, the prince-bishop whose verse drama The Mountain Wreath appeared in 1847. It was written in the tradition of the epic songs performed to the gusle, a single-stringed instrument. Montenegro is a small country that spent most of the twentieth century inside Yugoslavia, and few of its writers have reached English readers.
Milovan Djilas's Land Without Justice, translated from Serbo-Croatian, recalls his boyhood in early twentieth-century Montenegro, among clan loyalties, blood feuds and poverty. Andrej Nikolaidis sets The Son in a coastal town, a bleak portrait of nationalism and provincial life after Yugoslavia. Kenneth Morrison's Montenegro: A Modern History runs from the prince-bishops to independence in 2006, and Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon includes vivid pages on the Adriatic coast and the mountain people, from her 1930s Yugoslav journey.
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Djilas's memoir of growing up in early 20th-century Montenegro shows clan loyalties, blood feuds, poverty and the mountain society behind its politics.
A sharp, bleak novel set in a Montenegrin coastal town that shows the darker side of post-Yugoslav life, nationalism and provincial society.
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