Hidden Camera - Hardcover

Zivkovic surveys the shifting line between paranoid fantasy and legitimate threat in his mystifying novel. When the unnamed narrator, an undertaker, is invited to a private film screening, he’s surprised to see that the movie is one sustained shot of himself sitting on a park bench.—Publishers Weekly

A short, meaty book, this is an antimodernist parable heavy enough for you to know you’ve absorbed real substance, yet ironic enough to ensure you don’t want to kill yourself when it’s over. [A] wonderfully sardonic writer whose idiosyncratic vision so thoroughly serves his bleak, absurdist sense of fun.—Michael Moorcock, The Guardian

...a work of unexpected beauty and surprise. Zivkovic is seeking to communicate something about the nature of life and death, of existence and non-existence, which bends perception into new and challenging shapes. He marries the comic to the melancholic with an enviable balance and lightness of touch.—Dan Hartland, Strange Horizons

Hidden Camera is a love story, a story of love and death; it is also a parable of creativity. Hidden Camera is typical of Zivkovic’s circular narrative style: like a serpent swallowing its own tail, the last sentence of the story draws one straight back to the first. For Zivkovic, the act of creation is an act of love.—Tamar Yellin, Infinity Plus

A quiet, somewhat neurotic undertaker spends his days caring for his exotic fish, and of course his silent bodies as they arrive. One day, quite out of the ordinary, he receives a ticket to the movies. The movie, however, turns out to be of him, apparently filmed without his knowledge! Convinced that he is being targeted by a TV reality show, he plays along, only to be dragged from one adventure to the next, in a fantastic journey that evolves into a story of love, of death, and of ultimate creativity. 

And through his travails we discover new perspectives on our own roles in an increasingly insensitive and scripted world.

Živković is one of the most translated contemporary Serbian writers. By the end of 2016 there were 86 foreign editions of his books of fiction, published in 23 countries, in 20 languages.

He has won several literary awards for his fiction. In 1994 his novel The Fourth Circle won the Miloš Crnjanski award. In 2003, Živković’s mosaic novel The Library won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. In 2007 his novel The Bridge won the Isidora Sekulić award. In 2007 Živković received the Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša award for his life achievement in literature, and in 2014 and 2015 received three awards for his contribution to the literature of fantastika: Art-Anima, Stanislav Lem and The Golden Dragon.