Aleksa Djilas

Aleksa Djilas is a writer, sociologist and historian. He studied philosophy at the universities of Belgrade, Vienna and Graz, gained a masters degree in politics and sociology at Birkbeck College in London and a doctorate in sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Because of the critical stance of his writings and his support for dissidents and political prisoners in Yugoslavia, he remained outside Yugoslavia between 1980 and 1990, and was granted political asylum in the United Kingdom. His father is Milovan Djilas, who himself was a political prisoner under Tito’s regime.

Between 1986 and 1992 Djilas co-published the German periodical Kontinent. Ost-West-Forum. Articles of his have appeared in Spectator, The New York Times and Foreign Affairs among others. Among his best-known books are The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution, 1919-1953 (1991) and Najteze pitanje. Eseji (‘The Hardest Question. Essays’, 2005). More recently, he was involved in the publication of a a collection of letters his father and mother exchanged while his father was in prison, and of the diary his father wrote from 1989 until the end of his life in 1995.