Joža Horvat
Joža Horvat | |
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Horvat's portrait on the cover of Svjedok prolaznosti
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Born | Josip Horvat 10 March 1915 Kotoriba, Austria-Hungary |
Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Zagreb, Croatia |
Pen name | Joža |
Occupation | Writer |
Period | 1935 |
Genre | novele |
Notable works | Ciguli Miguli (1952) Mačak pod šljemom (1962) Besa–brodski dnevnik (1973) Operacija "Stonoga" (1982) Waitapu (1984) Svjedok prolaznosti (2005) |
Notable awards | Vladimir Nazor Award for lifetime achievement in literature |
Spouse | Renata Horvat (neé Jesensky)[1] |
Children | Radovan–Mićo (d. 1973) Marko (d. 1975)[2] |
Josip "Joža" Horvat (10 March 1915 – 26 October 2012) was a Croatian writer. He was the author of many novels, short stories, dramas, screenplays, essays and radio dramas, translated into at least nine languages, including Russian, Chinese and Esperanto.[3]
Life and career
Horvat was born in Kotoriba, Međimurje County, at the time in Austria-Hungary. During World War II he fought in Yugoslav Partisans, which later inspired the novel Mačak pod šljemom (Tomcat under a Helmet, 1962) which had a somewhat ironical view of the partisan movement, adapted both into a feature film and a miniseries. The screenplay Ciguli Miguli (1952), critical of bureaucracy, briefly brought him into disfavour with the Communist party authorities, on which occasion he turned to sailing.
In mid-1960s Horvat and his family sailed the world in the sailing yacht Besa, and his travel journal Besa–brodski dnevnik (Besa–Ship's Log, 1973) became a best-seller. The second trip around the world was marked by tragedy: Horvat’s older son, who stayed back, died in a traffic accident in 1973, and his younger son drowned in Venezuela in 1975.
After a period of deep crisis Horvat published two acclaimed novels inspired by these events, Operacija "Stonoga" (Operation "Centipede", 1982), about a search for a lost island in the Atlantic, and Waitapu (1984), about a Pacific Islander boy who decides to sail across a taboo line. His last work is a memoir titled Svjedok prolaznosti (A Witness to Impermanence, 2005).[3][4][5][6]
Horvat attended the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb and served as a secretary of Matica hrvatska.[3]
References
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