Authors

Zoran Malkoč (Nova Gradiška, 1967) graduated with a degree in Comparative Literature and Linguistics from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. Even though he considers himself a pacifist, in 1991 he joined the Croatian armed forces to fight in the war for independence, which left a mark on his entire generation and much of his writing.

For the short story “When I Was Nana Pila – Dead, Yet in My Prime” he received the prestigious Ranko Marinković Award (2009). His short stories have been included in several Croatian short story anthologies. He has been included in two anthologies published in Mexico and the United Kingdom.

His novel Rocky Rocket (Profil, 2014) won the 2015 T-portal award for novel of the year. For Mountain of Balloons he received a second-place V.B.Z. Award for best unpublished novel (2002). For the Lesser Czars' Cemetery, he was awarded the Josip & Ivan Kozarac Award in 2010. This short story collection has been translated into Spanish and Catalan. Some of the short stories from the collection have been published by the Argentinean literary journal La Balandra in 2012 and by La Peste (Mexico City) in 2014.