Zoran Zivkovic

A bizarre encounter between doubles in a foggy park. The mysterious sudden death of one of the passengers in a train's restaurant car. The hilarious yet tragic consultation of a psychiatrist with her highly unusual patient. A conversation in a Turkish bath between an invisible stranger and a penniless gambler. What do all these odd situations have in common? It is their famous, brilliant and troubled protagonist, for in this, the latest imaginative explosion from the brain of Zoran Zivkovic, the main character is none other than the magnificent author of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov: our eponymous Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (a.k.a. F. M. D. 19). The scenes may seem familiar, but Zivkovic takes the great novelist to places he has never been before and to which no other writer would dare take him: into parallel realities, into Orient Express-like murder mysteries, into the realms of artificial intelligence and future miracles. And indeed, he does die four times, and indeed he is resurrected into an afterlife only an admirer who loved him with his whole heart could dream up for him...

A bizarre encounter between doubles in a foggy park. The mysterious sudden death of one of the passengers in a train's restaurant car. The hilarious yet tragic consultation of a psychiatrist with her highly unusual patient. A conversation in a Turkish bath between an invisible stranger and a penniless gambler. What do all these odd situations have in common? It is their famous, brilliant and troubled protagonist, for in this, the latest imaginative explosion from the brain of Zoran Zivkovic, the main character is none other than the magnificent author of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov: our eponymous Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (a.k.a. F. M. D. 19). The scenes may seem familiar, but Zivkovic takes the great novelist to places he has never been before and to which no other writer would dare take him: into parallel realities, into Orient Express-like murder mysteries, into the realms of artificial intelligence and future miracles. And indeed, he does die four times, and indeed he is resurrected into an afterlife only an admirer who loved him with his whole heart could dream up for him...

Ivana has gone missing... With her disappearance there begins a fantastical adventure for Professor Zoran Zivkovic, author and teacher of creative writing. Assisted by Senior Inspector Sanja Mrvaljevic of the Belgrade police, military counterintelligence, the National Security Agency and ultimately Interpol, the search for Ivana grows into a comic nightmare of unforeseen proportions. For why and how do a series of mysterious videos, in which Ivana plays the starring role, reach Professor Zivkovic's inbox, and why are their settings at once strangely familiar and unfamiliar? How will he escape the web of suspicion which weaves implacably about him, and will he and Ivana ever be reunited? Once again, this time in the ultimate sense, Zivkovic explores the trickeries and mysteries of the creative process, in a book that is gripping, hilarious, touching and more revealing than any he has yet written.

Ten linked stories with resonant titles explore almost every conceivable aspect of human memory: the positive and the negative, the precious and the profane, the heavenly and the unbearably hellish. Zivkovic's deceptively simple tales anatomize the essence of what makes human beings tick, our passions, our vanities and yearnings; the very memories which make us who we are.

What is the link between red hair, a red bowling ball and a red bikini? Between an overcoat with asymmetrical lapels, a scarf with two blotches and a pair of non-matching sneakers? In this brainteasing trio of stories, Zoran Zivkovic explores the collision of realities: a man encounters an alternate self, a woman out on a shopping trip runs into her dead neighbor and a fourteen-year-old girl chases her seventeen-year-old future son across town. Through absurd predicament, surreal situations and hot pursuit, Zivkovic addresses deep and ultimately poignant questions of fate and chance, the vagaries of human character and the hidden potential which lies within us all.Winner of the 2007 Isidora Sekulic AwardWinner of the Golden Hit Liber Award (given by Serbian National Television to the most prominent prose book published in 2007)Shortlisted for the 2007 NIN Award

In what strange edifice of the imagination do you find a condemned cell, a hotel room and a hospital room? What kind of hotel offers a zinc mine, a meat-packing plant, a weapons factory and a cemetery of famous artists among its attractions? Why do four people commit suicide in the same bathroom and why does a literature professor cut up several of the greatest works of literature into a confetti of letters?In this wildly imaginative, wildly funny satire on Art and Death nothing is quite what it seems and the maze of symbols grows more complex with each encounter.

Six strangely related stories about six encounters that could or should have never happened... Encounters that are impossible, encounters that are from beyond the boundaries of what we have decided is reality and possibility, and yet remain within the realms of what we call ordinary.

This concise book by the well-known Serbian writer and literary researcher summarizes his decade-long experience of teaching creative writing at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. Always offering attendees four good reasons for not attending his course, or, in a broader perspective, discouraging them from professional writing altogether, the author reflects ultimately on what it really takes to become a writer of literary fiction. This essay, which makes up the first part of this work, is complemented by a selection of witty short stories, forming the second part, and which have been used as templates in the teaching context.

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? Runner-up for the 1998 NIN Award, by a World Fantasy Award-winning author

What lies behind the human urge to collect things? What is the true psychology of the kleptomaniac? These questions bear on all of us; within every person there lurks a fanatical philatelist or a monomaniacal lepidopterist, just waiting to burst forth. In his new story cycle, Twelve Collections, Zoran Zivkovic, the master of mind-bending surreal fantasy, applies his fertile mind to this problem. Some of Zivkovic's characters are lonely eccentrics, driven to gather unusual objects by quirks of temperament or fate; others are the victims of metaphysical collectors from Beyond, entities eager to snap up memories, emotions, and other loose fragments of the soul.In these pages are explained the profound karmic consequences of photographic narcissism, insane record-keeping, the archiving of one's nail clippings, and the infinite savouring of words; here also are exemplary warnings against surrendering hope, living without creativity, accepting too blithe a Heaven, and answering the phone in the middle of a dream-haunted night. Of course, even with such sage counsel, life remains uncertain and perilous; but even if ultimate answers can never be found, a Zivkovic collection is always eminently collectable...

The Writer: A Very Short Novel, without Chapters, about Writing and Darkness 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.The Ghostwriter A writer sits down to work, but who can resist the addictive temptation of the email inbox? Each message alert brings a new question and a fresh challenge, until a tangled web weaves its way around the hapless author. Yet all the while his cat, Felix, gets on with life regardless. Zoran Zivkovic's hilarious new novella lays bare the oddities and absurdities of the writing life: the traps writers set for themselves and the snares readers lay for them. Here, too, are fascinating puzzles about the nature of authorship and the writer's identity, the relationship between the writer and their work and between the writer and the reader, the reader and that which is read. Above all, though, it is a paean to the Cat, to a relationship which in its simplicity and innocence, its playfulness and affection, makes nonsense of all these human perplexities.

On a strange train journey, in a series of six compartments, a traveller experiences unpredictable encounters, culminating in a meeting of epiphanic power. Through a narrative of dreamlike sharpness Compartments taps into the fears and absurdities, the beauties and mysteries of the unconscious mind, to achieve a consummation both moving and full of hope.Includes a new essay on Compartments by British author Tamar Yellin.

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.

A glorious surrealistic work that brings together a computer wizard living in exile, spherical aliens, Archimedes, Ludolph van Ceulen, Nikola Tesla, and Stephen Hawking to resolve a mystery and a threat affecting all of humanity... joining forces with Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty, and a female computer named Rama.

On a strange train journey, in a series of six compartments, a traveller experiences unpredictable encounters, culminating in a meeting of epiphanic power. Through a narrative of dreamlike sharpness Compartments taps into the fears and absurdities, the beauties and mysteries of the unconscious mind, to achieve a consummation both moving and full of hope.Includes a new essay on Compartments by British author Tamar Yellin.