Vladan Matijević
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Vladan Matijević (Serbian-Cyrillic: Владан Матијевић; born 16 November 1962 in Čačak, SFR Yugoslavia) is a Serbian writer. He worked for eighteen years as an engineer in Pančevo's chemical base factory before completing his university education, graduating in Philosophy. Since 2005, he has been director of Nadežda Petrović Gallery in his native town, where he lives with his two daughters. He is a widower, his deceased wife Sonja's grandmother was Combat Veteran of Partizan Brigade in Bor, who saved the life of her later husband Imre Tiszmer. [1]
Matijević is a multiple laureate of Serbian literary awards. He said in interview that he tries to write as little as possible. Nevertheless, he has created a considerable body of literary work. His most successful novel Moments of Joy has been published in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, and Macedonian. In 2009, he took part in the New Literature from Serbia event organised by the Austrian literary society Podium, where he read from Moments of Joy on the stage at the Viennese coffee house Prückel. The passage was subsequently read by an actress in German. In 2011, a collection of four short stories was published as a multilingual edition in Albanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Romanian. In the same year, he participated in the Salon international du livre de Québec, the Leipzig Book Fair, and the multinational cultural program Literature in Flux, organised by the HALMA Network and the International Canetti Society. There were readings on board ships in the harbours of European cities along the Danube, he read in Ruse, Cetate, Belgrade, Novi Sad and Budapest. Matijević was a Serbian representative at the European Literature Nights 2013 in Paris. In 2014, an English edition of his novel Very Little Light was published. In 2016, a half-hour conversation between Matijević and the writer Aleksandar Gatalica was broadcast by RTS as part of the program series Književni dijalog (Literary Dialogue). He participated in the Beijing International Book Fair 2017. In June 2018, he was invited by the Andrić Institute to Andrićgrad, where he talked about his work in a public discussion and answered questions from the audience.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]
In an interview with Gloria magazine, the writer was to associate each letter of the alphabet with an aphorism; some examples follow:
- B - Belgrade: A city where I have experienced many delightful moments.
- E - European Union: We have been taking big steps for decades, and we have not come closer for a millimeter. Maybe it is a Serbian Fata Morgana.
- G - Gandhi: prevailed without violence against the Empire and liberated the country. A fact that sounds like a myth.
- H - Harem: after the liberation from the Ottoman Turks, some of our Vojvodes tried to preserve this wonderful oriental institution but were destroyed by European influence and premature Serbian emancipation.
- P - Process: the best prose work of the Twentieth century.
- V - Vatre: the first masterpiece of Marguerite Yourcenar. She wrote it to overcome her unhappy love.[14]
On advertising, Matijević said:
Since the second half of the 20th century, there are graduate marketing professionals in all areas of life. Advertising has become the greatest need of each person, it does not know any toothpaste to use, nor any food to eat, nor in what bed it wants to sleep until it is explained to the person by an advertising expert. I notice that today it is especially important that is something inexpensive. And that's why everything became cheap. Such are our lives as well. Soon they will also go on sale. With the emergence of the internet, the phenomenon of advertising has reached its peak.[15]
