Roman Simić

Roman Simić Bodrožić was born in 1972 in Zadar, Croatia. He holds a degree in Spanish Language and Literature as well as in Comparative Literature from the University of Zagreb. He worked as editor of one of Croatia’s most important literary magazines, Quorum.

With his first book, »U trenutku kao u divljini« (1996; tr: In the Moment Like in the Wilderness, verses), he was runner-up for the Goran prize for Young Poets. His prose debut »Mjesto na kojem ćemo provesti noć« (2000; tr: A Place Where We’re Going to Spend the Night), a collection of short stories, takes place somewhere in Mexico or Arizona; it captures the imagination of a young readership more interested in Raymond Carver than in the Croatian classics. His second anthology of short stories titled »U što se zaljubljujemo« (tr: What Are We Falling in Love With), is a personal reflection on relationships and their meaning. For this book he received the Jutarnji list Prize for the best Croatian prose book of the year 2005. It was translated into German, Spanish, Macedonian, Slovenian, as well as published in Serbia. His third collection of short stories, »Nahrani me« (tr: Feed Me), was published in 2012 and is largely inspired from his own experience of family life, of what it means to be a parent and to lose one’s own parents. His prose work successfully captures the mood of a generation and the narratives cleverly blur the line of distinction line between autobiography and fiction: the reader knows that the author is present somewhere in the stories, even if he never quite knows to what extent. The writer Saša Stanišić says about his prose: »Simić’s stories are like cities, so well composed that you just want to walk slowly in the streets of his sentences. I like to be a tourist in his cities!« Simić’s short stories are published in various selections and anthologies of contemporary Croatian prose and are translated into numerous languages, including German. As a prose writer he won a grant from the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin in 2004, and the CCN Graz stipend in 2003.

Roman Simić is also the artistic director of the Festival of the European Short Story, an annual festival held in Zagreb and one other partner city in Croatia that invites eminent authors from different European countries, and publishes the »Anthologies of the European Short Story« series. Roman Simić lives in Zagreb and has been working since 2012 as an editor at Fraktura publishing house, after several years spent at Profil International.

U trenutku kao u divljini

Goranovo proljece

Zagreb, 1996

Mjesto na kojem ćemo provesti noć

Naklada MD

Zagreb, 2000

U što se zaljubljujemo

Profil Knjiga

Zagreb, 2005

In was wir uns verlieben

Voland & Quist

Dresden, 2007

[Ü: Alida Bremer]

Nahrani me

Profil Knjiga

Zagreb, 2012

Von all den unglaublichen Dingen

Voland & Quist

Dresden, 2013

[Ü: Brigitte Döbert]