Drew’s Paper

A Conversation With Zoran Zivkovic

A connoisseur of the fiction industry: this is the most elementary, yet most precise way to introduce the man that goes by the name of Zoran Zivkovic. The story of Zivkovic himself began in the far eastern European country of Serbia; he graduated from the University of Belgrade (Serbia’s capital city) with a degree in literary theory, and set out to leave his ineliminable mark on the fiction industry. For the next twenty years following his graduation, Zivkovic focused on the science subgenre of fiction; within this time-frame, he accomplished as many things as several men can dream of in their lives. The highlights of Zivkovic’s two-decade long science fiction stage include founding a publishing company that would go on to publish 200 books and translate over 70 books, authoring an entire encyclopedia pertaining to the art of fiction, and serving as television host for a sci-fi series. As this era of Zivkovic’s work came closing to an end, he decided it was time to take fictional writing to a new magnitude; in order to accomplish this feat, Zivkovic threw the stereotypic standards for fiction out the window, and decided to break out of the box and focus on new ideologies of fiction writing. He would go on to achieve much success for his new, non-generic style of fiction. Perhaps the most prestigious trophy Zivkovic received to commemorate the success of his newfound brand of fiction was his winning of the World Fantasy Award for his novella, “The Library.” Currently, Zivkovic teaches at his alma mater, the University of Belgrade, as a professor of creative writing.

A list of Zoran Zivkovic’s works include:

  • The Fourth Circle (1993.)
  • Time Gifts (1997.)
  • The Writer (1998.)
  • The Book (1999.)
  • Impossible Encounters (2000.)
  • Seven Touches of Music (2001.)
  • The Library (2002.)
  • Steps through the Mist (2003.)
  • Hidden Camera (2003.)
  • Compartments (2004.)
  • Four Stories till the End (2004.)
  • Twelve Collections and The Teashop (.)
  • The Bridge (2006.)
  • Miss Tamara, The Reader (2006.)
  • Amarcord (2007.)
  • The Last Book (2007.)
  • Escher’s Loops (2008.)
  • The Ghostwriter (2009.)
  • The Five Wonders of the Danube (2011.)
  • The Grand Manuscript (Nađi me, 2012.)
  • The Compendium of the Dead (2015.)
  • The Image Interpreter (2016.)

Several questions that I may ask Zivkovic (and his assumed responses following them, would be:

  1. What attracted you to pursue fictional writing over nonfiction?

“Ovaj izbor je bio veoma jednostavan izbor za mene. Uvek sam imao ekscentrični maštu, tako da bi se proizveo najviše prosperitetnu deo pisanja za mene, moram da se drže svojih korena kreativnosti i radoznalosti.”

(This choice was a very simple choice for me. I’ve always had an eccentric imagination, so in order to produce the most prosperous piece of writing for me, I need to stick to my roots of creativity and curiosity).

  1. What motivated you to break free of the science fiction genre and begin the process of paving your own path of creative fictional writing?

“Kao što sam ranije rekao, Ponosim se u biti pisac bez prefiksa. Verujem da ako se kategoriše na određeno žanru, vi se ograničavaju uz ograničenje uspeh pisanjem. Izborom da vodi više kreativan i unrestricting stil pisanja fantastike, bio sam u stanju da pobegne u kavez kategorisanih SF žanra i šire krila i leti”

(As I’ve said before, I pride myself in being a writer without prefixes. I believe that if you categorize yourself to a specific genre, you are limiting yourself along with limiting the success of your writing. By choosing to pursue a more creative and unrestricting style of fiction writing, I was able to escape the cage of categorized fiction genres and spread my wings and fly).

  1. What piece of writing of yours are you most proud of, and why?

“Iako je moj novela, “Biblioteka”, verovatno postigla najveći uspeh, ja sam najviše ponosan na mom romanu, “Četvrti krug.” Kao što sam prešle iz majorli objavljivanje knjige da ih bio autor, suočio sam bezbroj prepreka, i “Četvrti krug “predstavlja svoj ponos prevazilaženja ovih prepreka i postizanju svoje ciljeve”

(Although my novella, “The Library,” arguably achieved the most success, I am most proud of my novel, “The Fourth Circle.” As I transitioned from majorly publishing books to authoring them, I faced countless obstacles, and “The Fourth Circle” represents my pride of overcoming these obstacles and achieving my goals).

I was attracted to the author Zoran Zivkovic for two central reasons. Firstly, as I was scrolling through the list of authors, Zivkovic caught my eye with the bold first impression of his name alone. “Zoran Zivkovic” is a fun-to-say, catchy name: after laying my eyes on his name, I had to click on his interview to find out more about him, and it was safe to say I was not let down. Secondly, my decision to due this paper on Zivkovic was set in cement when I read his response about breaking from from the stereotypical fiction genre. I loved his line about having “no prefixes” in writing, and I would like to apply this short, little memento to the way I live my life.

Overall, I thought the Dalkey Archive website was efficiently designed. The strongest feature of it could be the catalogue where you can search for the entries that you so wish. I find it very helpful how you can browse by country, author, series and seemingly endless other options; I am a fan of having a variety of methods to obtain the information I need, so I would give this feature of the website a ten out of ten. If I could have anything done differently with this website, it would be to change up the mostly gray and hint of red color scheme. I know that the purpose of this website is not to entertain, yet I believe that with a more lively color scheme, the visuals of the web page would appear easier on the eyes.