Noble Prize in Literature Recipient. He is best known as the 1961 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient "for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country" and especially in "The Bridge on the Drina". He came from a poor household in an area of the world that had many different cultures. His first publication was when he was fourteen. He studied philosophy at Universities of Zagreb at Vienna, Austria. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the World War I, at the beginning of which he was jailed for three years for his anti-Austrian activities and upon release diagnosed with Tuberculosis. At the end of World War I, he published two more books of lyrical prose. One of the books was entitled "Anxieties" in 1919, which was written in the form of a diary, reflecting his experiences of the war and his imprisonment. After receiving a doctorate in letters from the University of Graz in 1923, he entered the Yugoslav diplomatic service as ambassador to Italy, Spain, Romania, and lastly Germany. In 1937 he was appointed deputy minister of foreign affairs and in 1939 he was appointed minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary to Berlin. Even though he took his diplomatic carrier very seriously, he never stopped writing. When the Nazi Army invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, he returned to Belgrade and lived there in seclusion throughout the World War II. Some say he was "under house arrest". This seclusion gave him the opportunity to write his three large works, all of which were published in 1945: two chronicles, "The Bridge on the Drina" and "Bosnian Story", and a novel, "The Woman from Sarajevo". He is at his best when he limited himself to his native Bosnia, her ordinary citizens and their differences, toils and misfortunes. Other books that were published were in 1948 "New Stories", in 1954 a true story "Devil's Yard", and in 1960 "Faces". Not only did he write poems and novels, but essays, chronicles and short stories. From 1958 to 1961, ten nominations from the Yugoslavian Author's Society, along with other sources, had been received by the Sweden Academy requesting him to be a candidate for the Noble Prize. His books have become a classic of modern Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian literature. He published a total of 24 books with half being translated in English by the time of his award; today, his books are published in all the world's main languages and well-received.