Mustapha Magyar as Posttraumatic Prose

Abstract

This paper deals with a somewhat different, and hopefully, more meaningful approach to the analysis of Andrić's famous short story Mustapha Magyar from 1923. That story “from the Turkish times” was justifiably declared one of Andrić's most successful short stories, and is often characterized by the attributes of his most enigmatic or mystical, even darkest text. It is often defined by genre as an expressionist character short story with a tragic anti-hero, with which, according to the majority of interpretations and analyses, Andrić questions the existence of evil in the world and the impossibility of achieving good. In this paper, we start from the assumption that Andrić created the character of Mustapha Magyar as a person who suffers from the psychological consequences of war experiences, i.e. mental disorder known today as PTSD, and we will try to prove this by using short story citations.