Zuko Džumhur

Džumhur published his first book in 1959, a travelogue entitled Nekrolog jednoj čaršiji (Obituary of a Small Town). Considered his best work, Nekrolog is also particularly exemplary of Džumhur's style of travel writing as a whole. Moving freely, fluidly and often unexpectedly between the familiar and the remote, past and present, real and imagined, Džumhur's travelogues can be characterized by a certain mobility, fragmentariness and easy diversion. In the only preface he ever wrote, Ivo Andrić characterizes the writing in Nekrolog as similar to the illustrations with which Džumhur accompanies his text.

In the same way that Džumhur moves fluidly between places, his travel writing is also unique in its focus on the history of every place he visits and writes. Interwoven into his physical descriptions of a city are detailed accounts and stories about its past. The seamlessness with which these historical interludes are incorporated into vivid accounts of the lived experience of a particular place makes present the long-forgotten past, compounding history with the everyday. In Grad Zelene Brade, Džumhur describes, in parentheses, the city's entire history, from Hungarian rule under Matthius Corvinus, through 200 years of Ottoman rule, the Venetian conquer of Gabela and 40 years as part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Džumhur's use of historical terminology and references to sometimes obscure past events and figures gives his writing a cultural specificity that makes it very difficult to translate. It has also led to characterizations of Džumhur's writing as anachronistic, or anti-modern, his "measuring of time and space as approximate, populist and old-fashioned, with a particularly cautious approach to modernity and its material and technological progress." This cautiousness, however "reveals itself in an ironic and satirical light...his archaicness is concerned with life and technological innovation and not spiritual, aesthetic or literary modernism." It is perhaps this blend of the conservatism and modernism that allowed Džumhur to be described both as an "old-fashioned Muslim in the mold of Istanbul and Vienna" as well as a figure who in the 1950s helped cultivated Belgrade's distinctly liberal, Bohemian atmosphere.

Džumhur published his first caricatures in an army magazine in 1947, and very soon became one of the most prominent illustrators in Yugoslavia, publishing his caricatures in the country's best selling newspapers and magazines, such as Politika, Borba, Oslobođenje, Jež, NIN, Danas and many others. He published over 10,000 illustrations and caricatures, wrote numerous screenplays and worked on the TV show Hodoljublje, which he hosted for over ten years on Sarajevo television.

Zulfikar "Zuko" Džumhur (24 September 1920 – 29 November 1989) was a prominent Bosnian writer, painter and caricaturist. His bohemian nature, versatility of a polymath and extremely creative personality have made him a unique figure of the Yugoslav culture in the second half of the 20th century.

Džumhur was born in Konjic, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina). When he was only two months old his father, the ulama Abduselam Džumhur (1885–1933) and mother Vasvija (née Tufo; 1900–1978), moved to the capital of Belgrade, where his father got a job as the main imam of the Royal Yugoslav Army. Zuko Džumhur finished elementary school and the first four grades of high school in Belgrade, then moved to Sarajevo where he finished high school in 1939. Džumhur attended classes at the Law Faculty at the University of Belgrade, but soon left and later finished his studies at the Belgrade Academy of Arts in Petar Dobrović's class. During World War II, Džumhur's younger brother was killed in 1945.