Twelve Collections and The Teashop
Finalist in the novella category for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award.
Longlisted for the 2008 British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novella.
Original title: Dvanaest zbirki i čajdžinica. Publishers in English: Polaris (2004), PS Publishing (UK, 2007),
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…
A five-part TV series, “The Collector,” produced by the Belgrade-based Studio B Television, is based on this book.
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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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