Darko Cvijetić

Darko Cvijetić, a poet, prose writer, theatre director and dramaturge at the Prijedor Theatre, was born on 11 January 1968 in Ljubija (a mining town) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His poetry and novels have been translated into French, English, German, Slovenian, Hebrew, Albanian, Hungarian, Polish, Macedonian and Yiddish.

He has published the following books: Night Gorbachov (Belgrade, 1990), Hymnica (Belgrade, 1996), Manifesto of Young Bosnia (Novi Sad, 2000), Passport for Sforland (Banja Luka, 2004), Mass Postcards from Bosnia (Banja Luka, 2012), Ropes with the Imprint of a Neck (Mostar, 2013), Little Exhumation Essays (Banja Luka / Belgrade, 2015), Emoticons on Viber (Sarajevo, 2016), Paralympic Anthems (bilingual, Ljubljana, 2017), Hedgehog Skins (Zenica, 2017), Schindler’s Lift (Sarajevo/Zagreb, 2018), The Snow Was Careful Not to Fall (Zagreb, 2019), and What Are You Sleeping on the Floor For? (Belgrade, 2020).

His books have been published in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Belgrade, Zenica and elsewhere. He is a member of the PEN Centre of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Writers’ Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Croatian Writers’ Association. He considers himself a post-Yugoslav writer. For his novel Schindler’s Lift, he received the “Kočić’s Pen” Award from the “Petar Kočić” Foundation in Banja Luka in 2019, as well as the “Fritz” Literary Award (Miroslav Krleža) in Croatia in 2020.

He has directed works ranging from Beckett to Chekhov at theatres throughout the region, and has performed roles including Raskolnikov, Boris Davidovich Novsky and Estragon. He studied horticulture and theatre studies under the master Leon Weiss. Sarajevo’s Chamber Theatre has begun preparations for a stage adaptation based on the novel Schindler’s Lift, directed by Kokan Mladenović.

“The literature of Darko Cvijetić is a courageous and futile attempt to understand the other and to have compassion for his suffering. […] Having carefully described the world of the red skyscraper, Cvijetić ventured into the ways people left the barracks of a besieged city. The story he tells is unexpected and terrifying. And once again, nothing has been left unsaid. And once again, as for the first time, it had to be told. This time, man is brother to man. But no longer as a metaphor.”

– Miljenko Jergović, on the novel What Are You Sleeping on the Floor For?

“When the guns, anthems, funeral processions and janazahs fall silent, there comes a silence that death loves most, because after it comes oblivion, finally nothingness, its complete triumph. Cvijetić speaks in that silence, giving the dead a voice that could not be heard while they were alive. He allows them to testify, warn and advise. He restores the humanity that was taken from them. Before you is a new novel, another vortex of tragedy described by Cvijetić. You will not learn the historical truth from this book either. You will gain knowledge that is far more precious – how the victims feel. While writing about death, Darko Cvijetić fights for every life.”

– Selvedin Avdić, on the novel What Are You Sleeping on the Floor For?