An Interview with Zoran Zivkovic
(Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show; interviewer: Darrell Schweitzer)

Q: "Your work first came to my attention with the splendid 'The Astronomer' in Interzone, which is not only a story about a powerful moral dilemma, but one of the best uses of the 'Lady or the Tiger?' ending I've ever seen. Was that your first publication in English? How long had you been writing in Serbian before that? What had you published?

A: "Yes, 'The Astronomer' was my very first publication in English. ...I started to write fiction only in 1993, when I was forty five. By the time 'The Astronomer' was first published, I had only four prose books: The Fourth Circle (1993), Time Gifts (1997), The Writer (1998) and The Book (1999). The beginning of the new millennium was my most prolific period so far. I am currently finishing my seventeenth book of fiction. Escher’s Loops is due to appear in May." 

Q: "How is fantastic literature regarded where you are? In the US, as you may know, it is still somewhat associated with cheap pulp fiction and not regarded as real literature by many establishment critics. Do you ever encounter that kind of division?"

A: "Such prejudices aren't very widespread in the Europe where fantastic literature has a long and outstanding tradition and is generally considered by the literary establishment not only as a legitimate part of the mainstream but often as its peak. Bulgakov and Kafka, two among the most prominent European authors of the twentieth century, are primarily masters of the noble art of the fantastic."

No, I Was Not the Prime Minister of Serbia: The Zoran Zivkovic Interview
(The New York Review of Science Fiction; interviewer: Michael Lohr)

Q: "As a supporter of the genre, do you feel that speculative fiction, or fiction in general, as a medium can change the way people look at the world?"

A: "Reading fiction in general, any kind of fiction, good fiction, enables readers to see the world from a new, different, often better perspective. Alas, people tend ot read less and less in the contemporary world. That is probably one of the reasons why the world is becoming more and more of an unpleasant place."

Q: "My personal favorite of the books you've written thus far is the short colleciton, Seven Touches of Music ... Is there a particular message that you were attempting to distill with this novel?"

A: "One morning back in 2001, I woke up and there it was, on the surface of my conscious, although with its roots deep in my subconscious. I jsut started to write it, trying to type as soon as I could in order to satisfy the impatient reader in me. ... I wrote Seven Touches of Music just because it was the right time for me to do that. There was no premeditation whatsoever."

On the Spot with Zoran Zivkovic (interviewer: Matt Denault)

"I hope the main appeal of [my mosaic novel form] to modern readers is the fact that it requires reading almost like a detective. You are constantly aware that there is a broader picture, an invisible whole that alternates with the more or less obvious meaning of its constituent parts."

Interview: Seven Touches of Music (inteviewer: Keri Holmes)

Click here to listen to a marvelously charming radio interview in which Zoran deftly handles Q&As in a language not his own... and in which he admits he has a favorite! (If you know Zoran, you know that's a rarity.) Keri Holmes of The Kaleidoscope Bookstore in Hampton, Iowa, conducted the interview on her weekly radio show.

(Note: the interview is in .mp3 format and may take a few minutes to load at about 6 MB...)

Interview: Zoran Zivkovic (interviewer: Jason Erik Lundberg)

"I am in a strange, almost schizophrenic position while I write. I am simultaneously a writer and a reader. The reader in me, eager to 'turn pages,' is usually dissatisfied by the slowness of the writer's typing."

An interview with Zoran Zivkovic (interviewer: Tamar Yellin)

"I remember what one of my elementary school teachers prophetically told me once after having read a piece of my homework. 'You are a hopeless case, Zoran. You will become anything but a writer...'"

Interview (interviewer: Lotesse)

Zoran takes a strong stance on his identity as a speculative fiction writer.

An interview with Zoran Zivkovic (interviewer: Ana Lucic)

Zoran touches on the difficulties of writing fiction in a non-mainstream language—in his case, Serbian. "Quality English translators from the Serbian are a rare breed."

From the literary German magazine Phantastisch, this excerpt:

Phantastisch: You have lots of experience as an editor, translator and publisher, before you started writing late in your career. Do you think an author needs to acquire sufficient experience in order to start writing? Further did you learn from the mistakes the authors you edited and published made?

Zoran: Every trade has its optimal years. For a writer that period begins in her/his fifties. In that sense I in fact started too early. (The Portuguese Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago had an ideal start.) We, the human race, have been writing for more than five thousand years now. Many, many things have already been written. Before starting to write you have a moral and professional obligation to read as much as you can. And it takes time. But it is time well spent. The best possible investment a writer can make. There are no wunderkinds in prose writing.

Phantastisch: You have said that there are only two themes in literature: love and death. I wonder if you would care to elaborate on this with reference to your own work?

Zoran: Paradoxically enough, there can't be Love without Death. They are inseparable. The other side of the coin of our greatest misfortune is our greatest fortune. No philosophical, religious or scientific system can cope with this ultimate duality. Only Art is capable of that, and among all the arts literature can penetrate most deeply into the greatest and most tragic secret of being human. Basically, these two themes are what we have been writing about for about five thousand years now, ever since literacy was invented. And they are still very far from being exhausted. Actually, they never will be and precisely that is the token of the eternality of literature.

From the blog of Samit Basu, this excerpt:

Samit: In recent years there's been a lot of talk about the New Weird, about speculative fiction writers blurring genre borders. ...Do you think the way ahead for South Asian speculative fiction lies in blending speculative fiction with literary traditions that are more associated with South Asian writing? Is there any particular tradition of South Asian writing you'd like to see married to speculative fiction?

Zoran: You have to identify your own specific literary voice and make other people want to listen to it. Never imitate what's currently popular in other countries. An imitator never really achieves anything...

Samit: While acknowledging that speculative fiction isn't monolithic, and there are a hundred different directions it's growing in at any time, what do you feel are the most exciting fields of work in contemporary science fiction and fantasy? What area would you like to see more work in? And what do you think new writers should avoid?

Zoran: I was never interested in what's currently fashionable. ...New writers should by all means try to avoid being identified as other writers' fans, although it's impossible to avoid various influences, of course.

Click here to return to Zoran Zivkovic's page...