Alija Nametak was Bosnian writer-storyteller, dramatist and a historian.

He attended University of Zagreb where he studied language and literature, alongside French and Russian languages. His literary career started early as he traveled and collected information on oral literature and ethnolinguistics. He wrote novellas and prose which were published in various literary magazines. He worked in Sarajevo as an editor of ”Novi Behar” [New Bloom] (1930 -1945), and later as a teacher at a couple of different high schools (Tehnička škola, Učiteljska škola, Gazi Husrev-begova medresa) [Technical School, Teacher's School, Gazi-Husrev-beg religious school]. For a while, he was a lecturer and an administrator at the National Theater of Sarajevo. He was accused and found guilty of conspiring against the government during WWII, and given 15 years of prison time. He spent 9 years incarcerated, and after being set free he worked as a coordinator for Folk Music Cultural Institute in Sarajevo, and later as a librarian at a Music Academy until his retirement in 1973.

He was a hardworking star trying to preserve cultural gems of Bosnia and Herzegovina. His punishment for shining so brightly was to be forgotten behind prison walls, but with the strength of his creative talent he was able to pull himself out of that black hole and create a shining spot for himself in the literary world.