Literary award for Zarko Radakovic

Major literary award for Zarko’s novel Kafana / Tavern. Congratulations, my friend!

tanjug

Zarko Radakovic is the winner of the literary award “Biljana Jovanovic” awarded by the Serbian Literary Society. Radakovic has received recognition for his book “Tavern”.

In our cultural circles, Zarko Radakovic is known as a translator of Peter Handke, and, more essentially, as an authentic and provocative prose writer whose poetics the novel “Tavern” has brought to perfection. A walk through the story of avant-garde art in the second half of the XX century takes place, apparently and really, in the pub: the “holy city” of European culture and cult site of the local life. In this walk Radakovic consistently undermines conventions and canons of literature, and in terms of subject, style, the relationship between art and reality, between the writer and literary hero, the writer and the reader.

Žarko Radaković dobitnik je književne nagrade „Biljana Jovanović” koju dodeljuje Srpsko književno društvo. Radaković je priznanje dobio za knjigu „Kafana”.

Odluku o dodeli nagrade jednoglasno je doneo žiri u sastavu Ljiljana Šop (predsednik), Srđan Srdić i Marjan Čakarević.

Žarko Radaković je našoj kulturnoj javnosti poznatiji kao prevodilac Petera Handkea, nego kao autentičan i provokativan prozni pisac samosvojne poetike koju je u romanu „Kafana” doveo do mogućnog savršenstva. Šetnja kroz priču o avangardi u našoj umetnosti druge polovine XX veka odvija se, prividno i stvarno, u kafani, „svetom mestu” evropske kulture i kultnom mestu ovdašnjeg života. U toj šetnji Radaković dosledno podriva konvencije i kanone književnosti, i kada je reč o tematici, stilu, odnosu između umetnosti i stvarnosti, između pisca i književnog junaka, pisca i čitaoca. (Tanjug)

About Scott Abbott

I received my Ph.D. in German Literature from Princeton University in 1979. Then I taught at Vanderbilt University, BYU, and Utah Valley State College. At Utah Valley University, I directed the Program in Integrated Studies for its initial 13 years and was also Chair of the Department of Humanities and Philosophy for three years. My publications include a book on Freemasonry and the German Novel, two co-authored books with Zarko Radakovic (REPETITIONS and VAMPIRES & A REASONABLE DICTIONARY, published in Serbo-Croatian in Belgrade and in English with Punctum Books), a book with Sam Rushforth (WILD RIDES AND WILDFLOWERS, Torrey House Press), a "fraternal meditation" called IMMORTAL FOR QUITE SOME TIME (University of Utah Press), and translations of three books by Austrian author Peter Handke, of an exhibition catalogue called "The German Army and Genocide," and, with Dan Fairbanks, of Gregor Mendel's important paper on hybridity in peas. More famously, my children are in the process of creating good lives for themselves: as a model and dance/yoga studio manager, as a teacher of Chinese language, as an ecologist and science writer, as a jazz musician, as a parole officer, as a contractor, as a seasonal worker (Alaska and Park City, Utah), and as parents. I share my life with UVU historian Lyn Bennett, with whom I have written a cultural history of barbed wire -- THE PERFECT FENCE (Texas A&M University Press). Some publications at http://works.bepress.com/scott_abbott/

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