Sava Babić


Sava Babić, was a Serbian writer, poet, translator and university professor.

His life

Sava Babić's parents arrived to Vojvodina from Hercegovina.
From the autumn of 1941 he studied at a Hungarian school.
He finished the high school in Subotica. In 1953 he passed the school-leaving exam, then studied Yugoslav literature at the University of Belgrade.
He worked for several publishing houses and cultural institutions.
Since 1974 he taught at the universities of Novi Sad, then Belgrade, where in 1993 he founded the Department of Hungarian Language and Literature, and worked as its head till 1999, when he retired.
In 2007 he received the Golden Cross of Merit of Hungary.
Babić is also an honorary citizen of Balatonfüred.
His first translation was a novel of Tibor Cseres: Hideg napok.
It was an important gesture of reconciliation between Serbs and Hungarians, because Cseres's book describes Hungarian war criminals reminiscencing in judicial custody about their crimes and killings of non-Hungarian population in 1942 raids in southern Bačka.
Babić translated also the works of Sándor Petőfi, István Örkény, Miklós Hubay, Gyula Illyés, Tibor Déry, Gyula Krúdy, István Eörsi, Sándor Weöres, Ádám Bodor, Lajos Szabó, Ottó Tolnai and Péter Esterházy.
He also translated all books of Béla Hamvas. Some works of Hamvas were published in Serbian language before the Hungarian edition.
Babić recently translated some works of Imre Madách and Sándor Márai, but these translations have not been published yet.

His works