Andrić, Ivo

Ivo Andrić was a Yugoslav writer born to Bosnian Croat parents of humble origins in Travnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austro-Hungarian Empire. When he was three years old, his father died of tuberculosis and he moved with his family to Visegrad. Andrić went to school in Sarajevo and later read philosophy, history and Slavic literature at the universities of Zagreb, Vienna, Kraków and Graz. He spent three years in an Austrian jail during the First World War because of his activities as a young Bosnian freedom fighter for a unified Yugoslavia. He was accused of being involved in the assassination of the Austrian successor to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo in 1914. While in prison he read and became deeply affected by the works of Søren Kierkegaard and Fyodor Dostoevsky. He was released during the amnesty of 1917.