The Book
Longlisted for 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
The Book is not quite 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.
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Zoran Zivkovic
Zoran Živković (born 1948) is a writer, essayist, researcher, publisher and translator. He was born in Belgrad, Serbia. His writing belongs to the middle European fantastika tradition, and shares much in common with such masters as Mikhail Bulgakov, Franz Kafka and Stanislaw Lem.
Zoran Živković graduated in literary theory from the Department of General Literature of the University of Belgrade in 1973. In 2000 his engagement in SF and in literary studies discontinued, and turned entirely to writing prose.
In 2007 he was appointed professor in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade where he now teaches Creative Writing.
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