Ćamil Sijarić was a Yugoslav writer of prose and poetry born in 1913 near the town of Bijelo Polje in the Sandžak region, a historically Ottoman province that today lies at the intersection of Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Albania. His 1956 debut novel Bihorci won the Narodna Prosvjeta award for best Yugoslav novel and his 1976 novel Carska vojska [Imperial Army] was a finalist for the NIN Award. Like his contemporaries Ivo Andrić and Meša Selimović, Sijarić’s works are often set in the Ottoman era, while the prevalence of folklore and a uniquely Balkan hauntology evokes the poetry of Mak Dizdar and Vasko Popa. In 1989, he died in a traffic accident in Sarajevo.