Rebecca West | Origin of Street Names

Section dedicated to giants - domestic and foreign personalities whose works, personal and social engagement had a civilizational significance, and after whom streets and squares throughout our country are named

Cecil Isabel Berfield (1892 - 1983), better known as Rebecca West, was a renowned British writer, literary critic, travel writer, journalist, advocate for women's rights, and humanist.

Born into an intellectual family, surrounded by books and "great conversations" from a young age, she displayed a talent for writing and literary criticism. In the following years, she established herself as a respected critic and correspondent for prominent British and American publications.

In her professional life, she used the pseudonym Rebecca West, inspired by the eponymous heroine of Henrik Ibsen's play "Rosmersholm". Under that name, she published over 40 titles, including novels, travelogues, biographies, and critiques.

As an intellectual with an adventurous spirit, she traveled and reported from various parts of the world - from the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis to apartheid in South Africa. However, she is best remembered for her exceptional travel writings, composed throughout her entire life and career.

It was precisely such writing that made Rebecca West known in our regions and perhaps, even more importantly, made the world aware of our regions.

It refers to the travel masterpiece "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon", a powerful and authentic testimony from her journey through the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, published in 1941, on the eve of the Second World War. Considered by many as the finest work of travel prose in the 20th century, both in terms of literature and culture.

Created during a six-week journey through Yugoslavia in 1937, this work, originally written on over 1,000 pages with an impartial pen of a worldly woman, showcases the ethnographic, cultural, and historical diversity of the peoples and landscapes of the former Yugoslavia.

Due to unfortunate circumstances, the book was overshadowed by the imminent events as it was published just before the start of the Second World War. Moreover, due to the change in the social order, it never achieved significant popularity in socialist Yugoslavia. However, it had multiple editions in Europe and, in fact, this legendary travelogue was long regarded as the best source of information about the Balkans in the Western world (at least until the 90s).

In recent years, to the delight of literature enthusiasts, new editions can be found on the shelves of local bookstores, and the name Rebecca West now symbolically graces a street in the Belgrade neighborhood of Konjarnik.