Death and the Dervish (Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian: Derviš i smrt, Дервиш и смрт) is a novel by Meša Selimović, published in 1966.

Sheikh Ahmed Nuruddin is a respected dervish in an Islamic monastery in eighteenth century Bosnia.

He narrates the story as a kind of elaborate suicide note “from a need stronger than benefit or reason” and regularly misquotes (or misunderstands) the Quran, the sacred scriptures of his faith.

He returns to the khanqah and learns from Hafiz Muhammed that Harun was killed in prison three days prior.

Nuruddin writes a lot about Hasan and his life, as well about his own education and misery after falling in love with a married woman.

Its protagonist is an intellectual, a chronicler, a writer, an alert and receptive spirit who, while narrating a novel, simultaneously tells and comments on its origin, purpose, development, making Death and the Dervish a story about one man, about human destiny, and, also, a story about a novel, self-criticism and self-awareness that the work possesses.

Talking about himself and the world around him, the protagonist reveals himself in many ways: as a self-aware personality in the phenomenological sense, as a subject of pure introspection; he is shown as the bearer of the so-called point of view, as the manifestation of the consciousness and conscience of what is happening; and we finally see him as an active man, in the process of changing from a reflective to an active and affective, tragic personality.

[5]The main character of this novel, Ahmed Nuruddin, a sheikh of the Mevlevi order, is moved from his peaceful, religious seclusion from the everyday world when he learns that his brother has been arrested.

From that moment on, a tangle of many temptations is unwound in front of him, which will not only push him out of his spiritual surrender to religion, but will lead him to a series of actions that possess the character of a political struggle for power and authority.

In this way, Dervish and Death shows the development and destiny of a man who, out of the most intimate needs, comes to a situation where, having abanonded one way of thinking and feeling, having left solitude and entered the world, he becomes a man of action, of life, and of experiential wisdom.

[7] A feature-length adaptation of the same title was made in 1974, directed by Zdravko Velimirović and starring Voja Mirić as Nuruddin.