Zvonko Karanović

Zvonko Karanović (1959) is a poet and fiction writer born in Niš, Serbia. Like the poets of the Beat generation he takes as his models, he has traveled widely throughout Europe, hitchhiking and often changing jobs. He has worked as a journalist, editor, radio host, DJ, concert organizer, and for thirteen years he was the owner of a music store.

He was starting to write draw on Beat literature roots, film, and pop culture. Later, he developed his own style called „dark neoexistentialism“. He is writer of distinctly urban sensibilities. For many years he was an underground cult figure. He is the only Serbian poet with a fan club (“The Silver Surfer”) – founded in 1991 and still operational.

His trilogy The Diary of a Deserters is the first such project in 21st-century Serbian literature, and is comprised of the novels More Than Zero (2004), Four Walls and the City (2006), and Three Snapshots of Victory (2009). Taking place in the period between April 1998 and October 5, 2000, the trilogy chronicles the lives of three young urban men who, fighting for their beliefs, attempt to live freely in an unfree land. His trilogy is dedicated to Serbia’s “lost generation” – those who, in the 90’s, either left the country, perished in the new Balkan wars, or suffered social marginalization due to their cosmopolitan worldview. All three novels received great attention.

Books of Poetry :

Blitzkrieg (1990)
Silver Surfer (1991)
Mama Melancholy (1996)
Extravaganza (1997)
Dark Highway (2001)
Stripping (2004)
Demons in the Bordello (2012)

Neon Dogs – Selected Poems (2001)
Box Set – Collected Poems (2009)

Dark Highway – Selected Poems (Croatia, 2008)
Drums and Strings, the Highway and the Night – Selected Poems (Ukraine, 2011)

His poems were translated into English, Greek, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovenian, Slovakian, Czech, Ukrainian, Germany and Polish.