Milan Milišić

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Milan Milišić (1941 – October 5, 1991) was a Yugoslavian poet and playwright. He wrote several volumes of poetry as well as translating Tolkien’s The Hobbit and the poems of Robert Frost into Serbo-Croat.

Milišić was born during World War II in the seaside town of Dubrovnik, Croatia, of Serbian-Bosnian parents and lived almost his entire life under communism. Milišić was married, from 1966 to 1976, to Briton, Mary Martin, with whom he translated The Hobbit. He later married artist Jelena Trpkovic. He fathered two sons, Oleg Milišić (born 1971), now press secretary for the U.N. High Representative in Sarajevo and New York fashion designer Roman Milišić (born 1973). His close friends included writers Danilo Kiš and Predrag Cudić.

Milišić never aligned himself to any political or ethnic agenda but his passport was revoked by the Yugoslav regime in the 1980s for writing an article that was perceived as anti-communist. After its return he was able to travel to the United States as a poet in residence at New York University, and Amherst College. Milišić died in 1991, when a bomb fell into his kitchen in the early days of the Balkan war. He was noted as the first civilian casualty of the Dubrovnik bombings. His poetry and travel writing, some previously unpublished, some repackaged, has continued to be published in Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia, since his death.