Vladimir Arsenijević (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: Владимир Арсенијевић, born 1965) is a Serbian novelist, columnist, translator, editor, musician, and publisher. He lives and works in Belgrade. Arsenijević won the prestigious NIN Award for the Yugoslavian novel of the year 1994 for his novel In the Hold (Serbian: U potpalublju).
Early life Arsenijević was born in Pula, SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia, and moved to Belgrade at a young age. In his early youth, Arsenijević (nicknamed Vlajsa) played with a punk band called "Urbana Gerila" as well as its post-punk offshoot "Berliner Strasse". After graduating high school and completing the mandatory military service in 1985, Arsenijević moved to London at the age of 20. He returned to Belgrade four years later in 1989.
Writing career
Novelist Arsenijević won the 1994 NIN Award in January 1995 for his first novel In the Hold (U potpalublju), thus at the age of 29 becoming the youngest ever recipient of the prestigious award. This was the first time the Award went to an author's debut novel. The anti-war novel, which takes place during the Battle of Vukovar in autumn 1991, was one of the first works published in Serbia to discuss the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia, although from the perspective of those who lived in Belgrade at the time. The slim 128-page novel got some attention internationally such as affirmative write-up by Laura Silber in the Los Angeles Times and was soon translated into 20 languages, placing Arsenijević almost instantly among the most translated Serbian writers. Translated into English by Celia Hawkesworth, the novel received positive reviews by Ken Kalfus and Richard Eder in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, respectively, upon its 1996 release in the United States by the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house. It was also staged as a play in the Yugoslav Drama Theatre by theater director Nikita Milivojević. Simultaneous to writing, Arsenijević supplemented his income by working as a guide in the Kontiki tourist agency. Since then, Arsenijević has published three other novels, two graphic novels and a book of essays. The long-awaited follow-up to In the Hold, and the second part of the envisioned tetralogy "Cloaca Maxima", novel Anđela was met with mixed criticism after it came out in Serbia in 1997. It was generally considered a weaker novel than U potpalublju and, although it was one of the best-selling novels of the year in Serbia, it failed to meet the expectations formed after the success of Arsenijević's debut novel. As the NATO bombing of FR Yugoslavia began in March 1999, Arsenijević was in Belgrade, but got out some two months later in May through an invitation from the France-based International Parliament of Writers to visit Mexico City. He reached Mexico via Sarajevo, Ljubljana, and Frankfurt, staying there until September 2000. In Mexico City he resided in neighborhoods of Coyoacán and Colonia Condesa, mostly making a living through a series of menial jobs and on the side playing in a band called Los Armstrings. Upon returning to Belgrade in September 2000, he published his third book Meksiko - ratni dnevnik, which revolves around Arsenijević's two-month stay in Belgrade under NATO bombing missions, his sudden trip to Mexico, and his friendship with Kosovo Albanian poet Xhevdet Bajraj. In 2004, Arsenijević came back with Išmail. This entertaining graphic novel set in 1979 is a result of the writer's collaborative work with Serbian cartoonist Aleksandar Zograf. It explores secret connections that punk and new wave scene in former Yugoslavia formed with the radical conceptual art and performance scene of the late 60's and early 70's as well as the negative influence that the politics of former socialist Yugoslavia had on both. Predator is a crossover between a novel and a book of stories set in different parts of the world. Consisted of several, at first sight, completely different stories, it is a rhizomatically structured story of almost a dozen protagonists who have one thing in common - they are all expatriates (an Iraqi Kurdish cannibalistic refugee in the US, a Kosovo punk rocker, a Bosnian junkie, an Irish priest, Belgrade yobs, Berlin anarchists...). Coming from troubled areas of the world, they pursue their own piece of happiness, but the circumstances of their particular realities distort the picture heavily. Jugolaboratorija, a collection of essays, columns and speeches contains around thirty texts written by Arsenijević since 2005. In 2011 Arsenijević published Minut - Put oko sveta za 60 sekundi ("One Minute - Around the World in 60 seconds") in artistic cooperation with Valentina Broštean who illustrated and designed the book. It consists of 25 fragments/stories set within one single minute of time (January 20, 2010, from 12:00 to 12:01 GMT) at 25 different spots on planet Earth such as Samoa, Hawaii, Brazil, Portugal, Kosovo, Kurdistan, Burma, Australia or Russia.
Editor In parallel to his literary engagement, Arsenijević got involved in publishing, forming a publishing company named Rende, where he performed the editor-in-chief duties from its foundation until 2007. Since February 2007, he's been employed as an editor at VBZ Beograd, the Croatian publishing house VBZ's Belgrade arm. Arsenijević is also a co-owner and editor at Reflektor, a Serbian publishing company releasing audiobooks. Among other works by various authors, the company has released Arsenijević's novel U potpalublju in audiobook form as read by actor Nikola Đuričko. He is one of the founders and directors of KROKODIL literary festival held annually in Belgrade since 2009. In 2017, he has signed the Declaration on the Common Language of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins.
Translator In the early 2000s, Arsenijević started translating English language novels into Serbian. So far, he's translated Macho Sluts by Pat Califia, God's Boot by Brad Fox, The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, and A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor.
Published works U potpalublju (1994) Anđela (1997) Meksiko - ratni dnevnik (2000) Išmail (with Aleksandar Zograf, 2004) Predator (2008) Jugolaboratorija (2009) Minut, put oko sveta za 60 sekundi (with Valentina Broštean, 2011) Let (2013) Ovo nije veselo mesto (2014) Ti i ja, Anđela (the remake of Anđela, 2016) Ka granici (2018)
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