Jovica Aćin

Jovica Aćin, essayist, short-story writer and novelist, was born on December 13, 1946, in Zrenjanin, where he completed his primary and secondary education. Upon moving to Belgrade to study, he began his editorial career, first with the bulletin of the Faculty of Technology, then with the Belgrade student newspaper Student, and later with literary magazines (Delo, Književna reč, Gradac, etc.) and publishing houses (Rad, Službeni glasnik, etc.). Among other publications, special issues devoted to his literary work have appeared in the magazines Reč (Belgrade), Polja (Novi Sad), Ulaznica (Zrenjanin), and Braničevo (Požarevac). Dr Svetislav Jovanov wrote a monographic study of his essayistic work, Heretic at the Altar, published by KOV, Vršac, in 1994. His stories and essays have been included in numerous Serbian and international anthologies, journal selections, and collections, and have been translated and published in magazines in France, Italy, Spain, England, Canada, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Vietnam, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, and elsewhere. One of his stories, from the collection Read in Your Eyes, was also adapted into an artistically accomplished short fiction film directed by Andrej Aćin.

Some of his most significant published books include: The Long Shadows of Short Shadows (1991, 1997, 2003), Destroy After My Death (1993, 2000), The Butterfly’s Dreambook (1996), Unearthly Phenomena (1999), Floating Objects (2002), Whoever Wants to Love Must Die (2002), A Little Erotic Dictionary of the Serbian Language (2003), Diary of an Exiled Soul (2005), Read in Your Eyes (2006, 2007), On Dragons, Ghosts and Trampazlins (selected stories, 2007), The Mouth of the Ocean (2011), The Gospel According to the Donkey (2013), Through the Mud (2017), The Stolen Novel (selected stories, 2018), Kinsmen (2017), and The Tram Driver (2019).

He is the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the Ivo Andrić Award for an essay; the Stanislav Vinaver Award for an outstanding authorial project, for Destroy After My Death and Fortune-Telling in the Ashes; the Dušan Vasiljev Award for his complete literary oeuvre and for his outstanding contribution to modern Serbian poetry; the Todor Manojlović Award for modern artistic sensibility; the Vital Award “Golden Sunflower” for Book of the Year, for Read in Your Eyes; the Sreten Marić Award for The Naked Storyteller; and the Njegoš Award for the novel Kinsmen.

“Few of our writers manage, with each new book, to attract the immediate and simultaneous attention of both literary critics and readers. Jovica Aćin is one of them. […] The reader enjoys the effortless unfolding of the narrative and getting to know the characters. The writer moves confidently towards his goal, fully aware that he is leaving behind a complex and vivid story populated by carefully chosen protagonists.”

– Milan R. Simić, on the novel The Tram Driver

Published: December 8th, 2020.