and Herzegovina. Many of his novels and stories were included into primary school curriculum and were part of the text-books. His works have been translated into more than a thirty languages, including English, German, French, Russian, Albanian, Czech, Dutch, Italian, Macedonian, Chinese, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Slovak, Slovene, and some of them have been turned into TV series. He was featured on the 0.50 Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark bill, which has been withdrawn from circulation and replaced with coins. Ćopić's biographer and close friend was Enes Čengić, a fellow Bosnian-Herzegovinian journalist and writer, who lived and worked in Zagreb, and was also biographer and sole beneficiary of Miroslav Krleža will regarding his entire opus, including significant portion of copy-rights. Čengić has written three books (in several volumes) on Ćopić, namely Branko Ćopić i njegovi junaci u slici i prilici (), Ćopićev humor i zbilja (1 i 2) ( 1 and 2), Ćopić kroz svjetla i pomrčine (), one publication Šesdeset godina života i šest miliona knjiga Branka Ćopića: prigodna publikacija (), while his daughter published one more, titled Branko Ćopić: Treba sanjati (), after her father passed away from his unpublished manuscript. Literary career From at least 1951 until his death Branko Ćopić was a professional writer, who lived solely of his writings as, due to his popularity, his books were sold in millions of copies, both in Yugoslavia and abroad. His first published short story was Smrtno ruvo Soje Čubrilove ("Death robe of Soja Čubrilova"), printed in 1936 in the Belgrade daily Politika. Politika's editor, Žika Milićević, was known for his strictness and he initially rejected many other Ćopić's stories, but he continued to write them and to send them to Milićević until he decided to print them in the newspapers. Milićević promised to that he will publish two of his stories each month, if they are good. Before 1941 and outbreak of the World War II in Yugoslavia, Politika published 125 of his stories. Ćopić considered this collaboration with Politika as a "great stimulus" and the "beginning of the serious literary affirmation". His first short stories collection Ćopić published in 1938, and continued to write throughout the war. He dedicated the first two published collection, entitled Pod Grmečom (, 1938) and Borci i bjegunci (, 1939), to his homeland Bosnia and Herzegovina. These collection of short stories proved his gift for storytelling, and were followed by other, including