Jedna ugašena zvezda: ilustrovani roman

by Lazar Komarčić

228 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1902

About the author

Lazar Komarčić is nowadays recognized as Serbian first science fiction novelist. He was a novelist, playwright and best known for his profound influence on what was to be become later the literary genres of science fiction and crime novels. He was the most read author during the turn of the century, according to literary critic Jovan Skerlić. Unfortunately, science fiction and crime novel writing at the begininning of the 20th century was not considered a literary pursuit and as time passed he was forgotten until the 1970s when his works were revived.

Lazar Komarčić was born in a small village of Komartica, near the town of Pljevlja, Serbia (then part of the Ottoman Empire), on the ninth of January 1839, to Milenko and Spasenija Komorica of Gornja Maoča in northeastern Bosnia. Lazar's uncle was killed by Turks and Milenko (Lazar's father) took revenge. He was captured and imprisoned in Pljevlja. After Milenko escaped, he took his wife and children and moved with kin in Valjevo. It was at this time that the family changed their surname to Komarčić. In Valjevo Lazar started school, but his parents soon both died. He moved to Belgrade where he studied at the Grande école (University of Belgrade).

A defining incident of Komarčić's life was the Turkish bombardment of Belgrade in 1862 that left him without three fingers. An incident erupted at Čukur ćesma when teenager Savo Petković, who was trying to get water at the fountain (ćesma) was shot and killed in cold blood by a Turkish soldier. That killing infurieted the citizens of Belgrade and a major conflict erupted between Serbs and Turkish occupying forces. Belgrade was then bombarded from Kalemegdan. During that bombardment by Turkish artillery from the Kalimegdan fortress, Komarčić at twenty-three held his ground together with the rest of Serbian insurgents. A Turkish grenade exploded near him causing him to loose three fingers on his right hand. What become known as the "Čukur ćesma conflict" brought the intervention of the European Powers and the Turks were eventually expelled from Belgrade.

After receiving that wound Komarčić decided to go into teaching, and from this time onwards he made writing his principal work.

To help out his sister he went to Crna Bara to buy and take over her business. After three or four years as a tavern-keeper he returned to Belgrade and began his literary career by contributing articles to a local journal, "Srbija". He also wrote for "Zbor". Eight of his novels were published at a time when Jules Verne, Camille Flammarion, and H. G. Wells were independenly working on the same genre. His most popular novel "Jedna ugasena zvezda" (One Extinguished Star) is heavily influenced by spiritism. Komarčić, like most writers of his generation, was influenced by Rufina Noeggerath (1821-1908), the famous Finnish spiritist who was known affectionately as "Bonne Maman" in her day.

Before the war of 1876 Komarčić took a leading place among the most radical section of Serbian politicians as an opponent of the "opportunists" who continued the policy of Svetozar Marković. In 1875 he became an editor of "Zbor", and worked with varying success to bring about the revision of the sentences passed on the so-called socialists.

Komarčić descriptive powers were of the highest order, and his style, pure of all affectations and embellishments, is of singular force and suppleness. He was as original a genius as Serbia produced during the turn of the century, the late 19th to the early 20th.