Popović, Radovan: The Last Baroque Serb: Stojan D. Vujicić – with him himself. Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 2021.

Radovan Popović was the editor of the cultural supplement of the daily newspaper "Politika" from Belgrade for a number of years. He is known as an extraordinary expert on Serbian writers and their biographies. Without striving for completeness, we will mention his monographs, which he dedicated to Ivo Andrić, Isidora Sekulić, Miloš Crnjanski, Jovan Dučić, Veljko Petrović and others. The book The Last Baroque Serb presents the biography of Stojan Vujić (1933-2022) primarily through his correspondence with Serbian and Croatian writers and with those literary historians with whom he was in close contact throughout his life. Vujić worked as a literary historian, literary mediator and translator on the Serbian/Yugoslav-Hungarian relations. In this book, a large part of the text consists of quotes from Vujicic himself, hence the phrase “himself” in the title. Radovan Popovic masterfully and at the same time subtly connects numerous quotes, and manages to weave together the entirety of the text of the biography. On the one hand, the author emphasizes Stojan Vujicic’s contributions to Serbian culture in Hungary and to Serbian-Hungarian literary ties, and on the other hand, he knows how to nuancedly portray the mood and character of the book’s main character. This edition is richly documented and illustrated thanks to the fact that Stojan’s wife, Marijeta Vujicic, in addition to the preserved family archive, also made her personal memories available to the author Radovan Popovic, contributing to making Stojan Vujicic’s biography seem more plastic, and to his literary work being positively valued. The book contains 60 illustrations: photographs as visual scenes from the life and literary work of Stojan Vujicic (about his encounters with significant figures from literary, artistic and cultural life), then the cover pages of some of his books, or works by other authors, phototype letters by contemporary writers, several paintings, graphics and sculptures, and one map of Hungary (with settlements where Serbs live) and a handwritten note by Stojan Vujicic. At the end of the book there is a name register with the names of 303 people. Copies of the book can be purchased in Budapest at the Serbian Institute Budapest V., Veres Pálné utca 19. – Tekelianum building)