My Friend Lovro: Annotated English Edition (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798241775375)

How to achieve dreams, how to reach heights in a world constrained by the shackles of social relationships? Can a poor peasant boy break free from the chains of custom armed only with gifted intellect and honesty? Or does every such attempt end up like a stone thrown into the sea, with a few quickly disappearing ripples on the unchanging surface of the water?

"My Friend Lovro" is a psychologically driven novella of intellectual ambition, social pressure, and inner collapse with autobiographical elements. The main events in it take place in the late 1850s and early 1860s, when Lovro, the main character, was the author's roommate during his student days.

With this work, Senoa introduced the theme of the misunderstood intellectual into Croatian literature. It is a paradigmatic novella in its choice of theme from contemporary life, its social and psychological motivation of the protagonist's actions, and the author's desire to show human "nature" through the analysis of individual protagonists.