Filip David

Filip David (Serbian Cyrillic: Филип Давид; 4 July 1940 – 14 April 2025) was a Serbian writer and screenwriter, best known for penning essays, dramas, short stories and novels. In 1987, he was awarded the Andrić Prize for his short story collection Princ Vatre,^[1] and in 2015 he won the NIN Award for best Serbian novel of the year 2014 for his novel Kuća sećanja i zaborava ("The House of Remembering and Forgetting").^[2]

Filip David
David in 2013
Native name	Филип Давид
Born	(1940-07-04)4 July 1940 Kragujevac, Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Died	14 April 2025(2025-04-14) (aged 84)
Occupation	Writer
Language	Serbian
Nationality	Serbian
Alma mater	University of Belgrade
Notable awards	NIN Award 2014 Kuća sećanja i zaborava

Life and career

David was born on 4 July 1940 in Kragujevac to a Jewish family. Members of his family were some of the victims of the 1941 Kragujevac massacre committed by occupation forces during the World War II in Yugoslavia.^[3] He graduated from both the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade and the Academy of Theater, Film, Radio and Television of the Belgrade University of Arts.^[4] He was a long-time editor of the drama program of the Radio Television of Belgrade.^[5] In 1989, he was one of the founders of the "Independent Writers" society in Sarajevo, in then-SFR Yugoslavia. He was also the founder of the literary society "Belgrade Circle" in 1990. This society opposed the then-ruling government of Slobodan Milošević.^[6] In 1992, David was fired from the Radio Television of Belgrade for organizing an independent trade union.^[7]

The writer was a signatory of the Declaration on the Common Language of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins within the project Languages and Nationalisms.^[8] The declaration opposes the political separation of four Serbo-Croatian standard variants that leads to a series of negative social, cultural and political phenomena in which linguistic expression is enforced as a criterion of ethno-national affiliation and as a display of political loyalty in the successor states of Yugoslavia.^[9]

David died on 14 April 2025, at the age of 84.^[10]

Work

David wrote several television dramas, dramas, books of essays, short story collections and novels.^[4]

Short story collections:

• "Bunar u tamnoj šumi" (English: "A Well in a Dark Forrest")
• "Zapisi o stvarnom i nestvarnom" ("Notes of the real and the unreal")
• "Princ vatre" ("Fire Prince")
• "Sabrane i nove priče" ("Collected and New Stories")

Novels:

• "Hodočasnici neba i zemlje" ("Pilgrims of the Earth and the Sky")
• "San o ljubavi i smrti" ("A Dream of Love and Death")
• "Kuća sećanja i zaborava" ("The House of Memory and Oblivion",^[11] also translated as "The House of Remembering and Forgetting"^[12])

Books of essays:

• "Fragmenti iz mračnih vremena" ("Fragments from Dark Times")
• "Jesmo li čudovišta" ("Are We Monsters")
• "Svetovi u haosu" ("Worlds in Chaos")