Vladislav Bajac

He was born in Belgrade in 1954 and later studied philology at the University of Belgrade. In 1993, he founded the publishing house Geopoetika, which publishes fiction as well as nonfiction books about history, art, rock & roll, and archeology. Geopoetika has published Serbian Prose in Translation, a collection of Serbian books translated into English. His books were translated into twenty languages. His best-known work is his 2008 novel, Hamam Balkanija, for which he won the International Literature Prize Balkanika. Its chapters alternate between two timelines, both of which use characters based on real people. The contemporary timeline is a collection of vignettes in autobiographical first person narration told from Bajac's point of view. In the original edition it was printed in the Cyrillic script, and people such as Alberto Manguel and Allen Ginsberg appear alongside the author. The earlier timeline consists of a single story set in the sixteenth century, using omniscient third person narration, featuring the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and Suleiman the Magnificent. That story was originally printed in the Latin alphabet. The book's themes, and its dual structure and narrative styles, raise questions about where identity comes from and how it is shaped by religion and national history. In 2017, Bajac has signed the Declaration on the Common Language of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins.

Poetry • Which way Leads To People, 1972 • The Path of Haiku, 1988 Short Stories • Europe On the Bull’s Back, 1988 • Dream Coasters (Geopoetical Fables), 1992 • Gastronomadic Stories, 2012 Novels • The Book of Bamboo, 1989 • The Black Box (An Utopia On Subsequent Reality), 1993 • The Druid of Sindidun, 1998 • Escape from Biography (A Life under Eight Names), 2001 • Europe Express (A Novel In Short Stories), 2003 • Hamam Balkania (A Novel and Other Stories), 2008 • Chronicles of Doubt, 2016 Empty Shot, 2024 English editions • Hamam Balkania, Belgrade, Geopoetika, 2009 • Hamam Balkania, Blooming Twig Books, New York & Tulsa, 2014 • Hamam Balkania, Istros Books, London, 2014