Suppressed Works · Banned Texts
Land Without Justice (Besudna zemlja)
The first volume of Djilas’s autobiography, and the book that explains the rest of him: a childhood in Montenegro among blood feuds, clan obligation and a justice administered by families rather than courts. It was written in the gap between his expulsion from the party and the prison sentence for The New Class, and read beside that book it supplies the formation of the man who would describe a ruling class from the inside. Djilas planned three volumes; the second, drafted as Rebellious Youth, was folded with the third into Memoir of a Revolutionary in 1973, so the autobiography is catalogued in the Hoover papers under all three titles at once.
- Period
- 1958
- Region
- Yugoslavia
- Language
- English
- Rights
- In copyright — do not store. First published in the United States in 1958 by Harcourt, Brace; the United States renewal is recorded as RE295839, naming an anonymous translator and an introduction by William Jovanovich. THE RENEWAL WAS CHECKED RATHER THAN ASSUMED. A United States book published between 1923 and 1963 lost its copyright unless the term was renewed, so "published in 1957" is not by itself an answer. Stanford’s Copyright Renewal Database was searched for Djilas and returns renewal records for this work and for the other two major titles. The renewal is real; the work is not free. WHO HOLDS THE RIGHTS IS AN OPEN QUESTION, and this record does not pretend otherwise. The finding aid’s terms of access say only "For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives," and Hoover’s copyright policy pushes it straight back: researchers are "responsible for compliance with copyright law," including "identifying the copyright owner," and staff help only where Hoover or Stanford itself holds the copyright. No public record found names an estate, an executor or an agent for Djilas. His son Aleksa Djilas appears in the 1984-1989 publishing correspondence in this collection, which is evidence of involvement and NOT evidence that he holds the rights; the distinction is left standing here rather than closed by a guess.
- Source
- https://archive.org/details/landwithoutjusti0000djil
This record is catalogued here; the text is held at the original source.
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