Novemer

3 november - Subotica, reading

9-11 - Skoplje, Macedonia, launching of Ludvig in Macedonian translation

15-18 - Sofia, Bulgaria, launching of Cow in Bulgarian translation

21 november - Graz, Austria, reading

22 November - Budva, Stefan Mitrov Ljubisa Prize

Oktobar

24 - 30 - Book Fair in Belgrade.

31 October - Pancevo, reading

A long time ago I said that the Belgrade Book Fair is my third home. I feel fine there and it does not matter whether I stay there for five days or only for one day. November is a good month for travelling, and at its end I have to go to Budva (Montenegro) to receive the Stefan Mitrov Ljubisa Prize for my literary achievements.

Septembar

New novel, Checkpoint, has been published in Belgrade

New collection of essays, People, towns, etc. has been published in Novi Sad

12 - 17 - International PEN Congress, Belgrade, Serbia

19. septembar -On Bernhard and his stories (lecture), National Library, Belgrade

September in Belgrade

The International PEN Congress will be held in Belgrade this Sepember. It is a historic moment for Serbian PEN Center as it is the first time that PEN Congress is organized in Serbia. It is an important recognition of Serbian literature and a sign that once again Serbian writers play significant role in the world literature today. After the Congress, I will talk about Thomas Bernhard, one of the most influential European writers of the last century. Talking about him and his stories, I will try to find out how much, as a writer, I own him. The lecture will be held in the National Library of Serbia in Belgrade.

Jun

20 - 25 - Translators' Centre in Banff

A Fantasy Travelogue

The first time I came to Canada, I came to Banff. As always, Banff looked like a dream. I thought: "If I enter this dream, I will never walk out of it." I entered, I walked out again and in the end I wrote a novel about Banff, entitled Globetrotter. The short text about Banff, which I wrote in June 1994, turned out to be a mystical prophecy of many events in my life.

13 Jun - Leeches , reading in Pages Bookstore in Calgary

Pages in Calgary

Pages bookstore is a famous bookstore in Calgary, one of the last small, privately owned bookstores that manage to survive despite Internet and many large (and identical) bookstores in every shopping mall. All my books translated into English have been launched in this bookstore. Ideally placed next to an idependent movie theatre and across "Higher Ground" coffee shop (another cult place in Calgary), it has been the symbolic center of my presence in Calgary for seventeen years.

May

Novel Leeches published in USA.

April

April 25 - May 1 - PEN World Voices Festival in New York.

World voices in New York

This is the seventh annual World Voices Festival in New York, organized by the American PEN centre. This year the organizers will bring more than 100 authors from forty nations. They will participate in numerous readings, discussions and presentations of new names and trends in contemporary world literature. A special one day conference, devoted to the role writer plays in today's society, will also be held. It is a reminder of the legendary PEN Congress which was held in New York in 1986, when the same question was the main theme of the Congress. I was actually at that Congress as a delegate of the Serbian PEN Centre. All big literary names where there, from Brodsky and Carver to Amichai and Bellow. Vasko Popa and Danilo Kis were also there. This time, going to New York will also be a sad reminder of all of them. Ars longa, vita brevis.

March

17 - 20 - Leipzig Book Fair (Germany)

Cow is a lonely animal

Eichborn, my German publisher, will publish a selection of my short-short stories, entitled Cow is a lonely animal, in time for the Leipzig Book Fair. I have included 120 short-short stories from almost every book of short stories I have published. Most of them come from three books of my stories: Neobične priče, Fras u šupi and from a still unpblished manuscript of Male priče. This selection proves that I have been interested in this form since the publication of my first book, Porodično vreme in 1973. This form of fiction is quite similar to the so-called "prose poem" and has been used my many fiction writers, including Franz Kafka, Istvan Orkeny, Daniil Harms, Thomas Bernhard i J.L. Borges. The title of this selection comes from the story with the same title which I wrote some twenty years ago, after a shor reading tour which took Mirjana Božin, Milivoj Srebro and me to Zenica and Travnik. I saw the lonely cow in a field near Travnik. She stood motionless as if it were the Buddha staring at the cosmic emptiness. I wrote this story several months later and included it in my book Pelerina (1993). I am sure that it feels fine as the leader of this selection which, for now, exists only in German translation.

January

Novel Ludvig published in Bulgaria.