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ZIVKOVIC, Zoran |
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 Zoran Živković
Zoran Zivkovic is the author of 16 books of fiction and five books of nonfiction, many of them translated into English, German, Portugal Portuguese, Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Russian, Danish, Turkish, Korean, and winner of literary prizes in different countries. The New York Times said about him: "And then, every so often, you come across a work whose vividness and vitality are so abundant they seem to transcend language. The Serbian author Zoran Zivkovic... already has many passionate supporters in America, and though it is too soon to crown him the new Borges, his published books make him a leading candidate for the position."
Zivkovic’s writing belongs to the middle European fantastika tradition, and he shares much in common with such masters as Mikhail Bulgakov, Franz Kafka and Stanislaw Lem. “As for my books finding readers in foreign languages and different cultures, I guess it's at least partly due to the fact that there are no localisms in my prose. Readers from various parts of the world have no problems in identifying with my nameless protagonists living in equally nameless cities. The fundamental dilemmas my characters are faced with are common to all human beings, regardless of their origin, religion, gender or cultural background. Although there is no doubt that great Literature can be made entirely of localisms, I proudly consider myself a cosmopolitan writer...”, Zoran Zivkovic
Zivkovic has been the recipient of the World Fantasy Award (only three other non-English language writers had won it: Jorge Luís Borges, Patrick Süskind and Italo Calvino) and the Milos Crnjanski, Stefan Mitrov Ljubisa, and Isidora Sekulic Awards as well as a two-time finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award and a two-time finalist for the prestigious Yugoslavian NIN Award. He has been named as a Guest of Honor for EuroCon 2007.
In 2007, Zivkovic was made a professor in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, where he now teaches Creative Writing.
He lives in Belgrade, Serbia, with his wife Mia, their twin sons Uroš and Andreja, and their four cats.
 | THE LAST BOOK (2003), 190 p.
translated into English (2008), German (forthcoming), Croatian (2007), Korean (forthcoming) A series of mysterious deaths in the Papyrus Bookstore brings literature-loving police inspector Dejan Lukic to investigate. Here he meets the attractive owner, Vera Gavrilovic, and learns that the only thing the victims have in common is that in the moments before their deaths they were reading an elusive and unidentified volume — The Last Book.
| | | |  | HIDDEN CAMERA (2003) 217 p.
translated into English (2005), German (2008), Spanish (forthcoming) The film rights for Hidden Camera have been optioned by the UK production company Chocolate Films. “I found the envelope wedged in the front door…” With these words begins a series of surreal adventures for a correct, sensitive and morbidly self-conscious undertaker. Drawn hither and thither across the city by the lure of the hidden camera, he finds himself caught up in an ever more perplexing and anguished pursuit, leading to a denouement both beautiful and satisfying. By turns sinister and comic, slapstick and profound, Hidden Camera raises questions about the nature of self-awareness, freedom and surveillance, as well as eternal themes of love and death.
| | | |  | STEPS THROUGH THE MIST (2003) 136 p. A Mosaic Novel translated into English (2006), Spanish (2004), Bulgarian (2005), Slovenian (2006) Five women of various ages face, each in her own way, what seems to be the deterministic trap of Fate: a freshman in a girls’ boarding school with the strange ability to share other people’s dreams; a young woman in a straitjacket, desperately trying to locate a very particular future; a middle-aged skier refusing to be just a puppet on a string; an elderly fortune-teller with insufficient faith in her own trade; finally, an old lady whose very precious alarm clock is suddenly broken. And engulfing all of them, a strange mist through which no-one can see clearly…
| | | |  | THE LIBRARY (2002) A Mosaic-Novel translated into Spanish (2004), Portuguese for Portugal (2005), English (2006), German (2008), Danish (2006), Turkish (2006), Polish (2008), Slovenian (2008)
Winner of the 2003 World Fantasy Award A cycle of six thematically linked stories, droll renditions of the nightmares ensuing upon misplaced, or (of course) excessive, bibliophilia. A writer encounters a website where all his possible future books are on display; a lonely man faces an infinite flow of hardback books through his mailbox; an ordinary library turns by night into an archive of souls; the Devil sets about raising standards of infernal literacy; one book houses all books; a connoisseur of hardcovers strives to expel a lone paperback from his collection.
| | | |  | SEVEN TOUCHES OF MUSIC (2001) A Mosaic-Novel translated into English (2006 as part of the collection Impossible Stories; autonomous edition 2006), Croatian (2001), Bulgarian (2002), Spanish (2004)
Seven stories about moments of divine revelation through music, which leave no mark beyond the ephemeral instant of their perception: a teacher whose autistic ward inexplicably writes down one of the fundamental values of theoretical physics; a librarian whose dream of the Great Library is reenacted upon her computer screen; a man who buys a music box that when played provides a glimpse into his alternative life; an elderly woman that, hearing a hand organ in a train station, begins to have visions of the death of everyone she encounters; a retired SETI scientist who, despite having no real interest in art, suddenly begins to paint a strange first contact signal; a dying professor who finally has a chance to hear in the form of music the answers to the ultimate questions; and a violin-maker's apprentice who knows the truth behind his master's mysterious suicide.
| | | |  | IMPOSSIBLE ENCOUNTERS (2000) 128 p.
A Mosaic-Novel (2000) translated into English (2006 as part of the collection Impossible Stories; autonomous edition 2008), Croatian (2001), Spanish (2004)
Six strangely related stories about six encounters that could or should have never happened. A post mortem encounter with a clerk who has a most bizarre offer; an elusive encounter with oneself, only decades older; a seemingly innocent encounter with a bookshop visitor who is desperately looking for an ordinary SF story; a memorable encounter with God in a train which, unfortunately, has to be forgotten; a dreamlike encounter with Devil in a Church as a first step on a road which doesn't lead to Hell; finally, a forbidden encounter of a dying author with one of his protagonists who brings an impossible book as a gift.
| | | |  | THE BOOK (1999)
translated into English (2004), Korean (2004), Greek (2006), Spanish (2007), Turkish (2006), Polish (2008), Portuguese for Portugal (forthcoming)
The Book is not exactly a novel, although almost half of it takes the form of a narrative, neither is it an essay, although quite a lot of what is said in it adopts that style. It is actually closest to that rare type or “para-genre” of satirical prose embodied in the exemplary In Praise of Folly by the famous humanist from Rotterdam. Instead of the “Folly,” of human manias and absurdities, here, in a similar kind of double-talk, the books themselves “speak,” those monuments to our intelligence, ambitions and self-importance, and they primarily “speak” by making an analogy between man’s fate and that of books—to man’s detriment, of course.
| | | |  | THE WRITER (1998) 196 p. together with THE BOOK A Very Short Novel, without Chapters, about Writing and Darkness translated into English (2003), Spanish (2007) Where does all the writing come from? Is it divine inspiration, a bolt of lightning that reveals a whole new work in a single glimpse, or a unique gift granted by demonic forces to penetrate the darkness and see beyond it? Two fundamental principles of the most noble of all arts are in the permanent collision, surrounded by the contagious environment of the authors’ vanity, envy, malice. | | | |  | TIME GIFTS (1997), 81 p. A mosaic-novel translated into English (2000), Croatian (2000), Czech (2001), Spanish (2004)
runner-up for "NIN" award, 1998
A mysterious visitor comes to see three desperate human beings: an astronomer in his prison cell the night before his execution for the ultimate heresy; a paleolinguist with a wasted life behind her who has been forgotten by everybody in her dusty basement office; an old watchmaker with a dark, painful spot in his past that has haunted him for decades. The visitor has a unique but ambiguous time-gift for each one of them. His true identity is only known by an insane artist locked up in her asylum atelier. But who would believe an artist in this world, even if she were not insane?
| | | |  | THE FOURTH CIRCLE (1993), 240 p. A Novel translated into English (2004), Russian (2002), Bulgarian (2005), Slovenian (2006)
Winner of the 1994 Milos Crnjanski Award
What could a computer wizard self-exiled in an abandoned Buddhist temple possibly have in common with the humble servant of a medieval fresco painter? What is the link between the enigmatic mission of a giant radio-telescope and a tribe of spherical beings who dwell in a world full of unearthly scents and herbs? What will bring four great scientists from various centuries, Archimedes, Ludolph van Ceulen, Nikola Tesla and Stephen Hawking, to the same spot in time? What has this got to do with Rama, a female computer program, impregnated by a strange ape? And, above all, why is it necessary for Sherlock Holmes and Moriarti to join forces so that the Fourth Circle can finally be closed?
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“Zivkovic's fiction is, above all, always readable, always entertaining. To read these books in succession is akin to dreaming a sequence of vivid dreams, from which one awakes with a heightened perception of life's beauty and strangeness. Their deceptive simplicity masks an attention to small details, like the precision of each setting described in Hidden Camera, linking them together and hinting at the thematic whole. Each scene is constructed like a piece of literary marquetry. The fantastic element is used for the best purpose possible: in order to pose the most daring and ultimate questions. One of those questions might well be: What is art for? The answer is, as ever: Read and find out.”
Tamar Yellin “Zivkovic's work is marked by a quiet and graceful style, by an interest in time, in the effects of knowledge of the future and the past on people's lives, and by a pronounced tendency towards metafictional effects” Locus - WORLD FANTASY AWARD
- MILOS CRNJANSKI AWARD
- STEFAN MITROV LJUBISA AWARD
- ISIDORA SEKULIC AWARD
- Guest of Honor at EUROCON 2007
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