The Bridge Zoran ŽIVKOVIĆ translated by Alice Copple-Tošić 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 Živković explores the collision of realities: a man […]

Twelve Collections Zoran ŽIVKOVIĆ translated by Alice Copple-Tošić 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 […]

Four Stories Till the End Zoran ŽIVKOVIĆ translated by Alice Copple-Tošić 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 […]

Steps Through the Mist Zoran ŽIVKOVIĆ translated by Alice Copple-Tošić Five women of various ages face, each in her own way, what seems to be the deterministic trap of Fate: a freshman in a girls’ boarding school with the strange ability to share other people’s dreams; a young woman in a straitjacket, desperately trying to […]

Impossible Encounters Zoran ŽIVKOVIĆ translated by Alice Copple-Tošić One of the most beloved “mosaic novels,” The Library presents a series of tales centered on our love of books—taken, at times, to extremes. A writer encounters a website where all his possible future books are on display; a lonely man faces an infinite flow of hardback […]

Impossible Encounters Zoran ŽIVKOVIĆ translated by Alice Copple-Tošić Six strangely related stories about six encounters that could or should have never happened. A post mortem encounter with a clerk who has a most bizarre offer; an elusive encounter with oneself, only decades older; a seemingly innocent encounter with a bookshop visitor who is desperately looking […]

Time Gifts Zoran ŽIVKOVIĆ translated by Alice Copple-Tošić 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 […]

Hidden Camera Zoran ŽIVKOVIĆ translated by Alice Copple-Tošić A quiet, somewhat neurotic undertaker spends his days caring for his exotic fish, and of course his silent bodies as they arrive. One day, quite out of the ordinary, he receives a ticket to the movies. The movie, however, turns out to be of him, apparently filmed […]

Seven Touches of Music Zoran ŽIVKOVIĆ translated by Alice Copple-Tošić 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 […]

A Biography of a Chance Miracle Tanja MALJARTSCHUK translated by Zenia Tompkins A Biography of a Chance Miracle explores the life of Lena, a young girl growing up in the somewhat vapid, bureaucracy-ridden and nationalistic Western Ukrainian city of San Francisco. Lena is a misfit from early childhood due to her unwillingness to scorn everything […]