writers

Ivica Đikić

Đikić's novel Cirkus Columbia (Edition Feral Tribune, Split, 2003) won the "Meša Selimović Award" for the best fictional book in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. The book focuses on individual and social breakdowns of the recent war, and takes place in a Bosnian province. Academy Award winner, Danis Tanović, directed the movie Cirkus Columbia (2010) with Đikić as a co-screenwriter. The novel Cirkus Columbia has been translated into Italian and Spanish. His latest novel is I Dreamt of Elephants (2011).

Ivica Đikić (Ivica Djikic) was born in 1977 in Tomislavgrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He started writing for newspapers at the age of sixteen. He was a journalist for the daily newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija (Split, Croatia), and since late 1996 has written continuously for the satirical, political weekly magazine Feral Tribune, a newspaper that has won several prestigious world journalistic awards. From 2001 until 2008 when Feral published its last issue, he was also the magazine's co-editor. In 2008, Đikić started writing for the daily newspaper Novi list and from 2009 until 2010 he was the editor-in-chief of Novi list in Rijeka. At the end of 2010, he started to work as the editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine Novosti from Zagreb which is published by Srpsko Narodno Vijeće (The Serbian People's Council).

For his novel, Cirkus Columbia (Edition Feral Tribune, Split, 2003), he received the book award "Meša Selimović" for the best fiction book in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. The book speaks about individual and social breakdowns of the recent war and takes place in a Bosnian province. Academy Award winner Danis Tanović directed the movie Cirkus Columbia (2010) with Đikić as a co-screenwriter. The movie Cirkus Columbia won numerous awards and it was shown in the cinema in 30 countries around the world. The novel Cirkus Columbia has been translated into Italian and Spanish and was also published in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2005) and Serbia (2011).

In 2004, Đikić published a political biography of then Croatian president, Stipe Mesić, entitled Patriotic Turnover (Domovinski obrat, VBZ, Zagreb). The book analyses the political and personal life of the former president of Yugoslavia, and later the first prime minister of the independent Republic of Croatia, who was then elected as the president of Croatia in 2000. In 2007, Đikić published his second fictional book Ništa sljezove boje (Mallow colour of Nothing, Edition Feral Tribune, Split) which consists of three separate stories (Green Castle, Please, Try and Sleep, As Nothing Ever Happened). The main subject of these stories is again war with its direct and indirect consequences and the setbacks it causes. In 2010, he published, along with Davor Krile and Boris Pavelić, a book about the controversial Croatian general Ante Gotovina (Gotovina – stvarnost i mit, Novi liber, Zagreb). His latest novel is I Dreamt of Elephants (Sanjao sam slonove, Naklada Ljevak, Zagreb, 2011.).

Đikić is one of the initiators and editors of the non-fiction book edition of Novi liber named Sa zrnom soli (Cum grano salis). He lives in Zagreb.

Translations:

Cirkus Columbia, Zandonai Editore, Rovereto (TN), Italy, 2008.

Cirkus Columbia, Sajalin Editores, Barcelona, Spain, 2011.

Sanjao sam slonove, Sajalin Editores, Barcelona, Spain (will be published 2013)

Agent:

Christian Marti Menzel

Agencia Literaria Transmit

Roger de Llúria, 82 Entr. 2a

08009 Barcelona (Spain)