Zoran Živković was born in Belgrade, Serbia, on October 5, 1948. Until his retirement in 2017, he was a full professor at the Faculty of Philology, the University of Belgrade, teaching creative writing.
Živković is the author of the 23 books of fiction:
- The Fourth Circle (1993)
- Time Gifts (1997)
- The Writer (1998)
- The Book (1999)
- Impossible Encounters (2000)
- Seven Touches of Music (2001)
- The Library (2002)
- Steps through the Mist (2003)
- Hidden Camera (2003)
- Compartments (2004)
- Four Stories Till the End (2004)
- Twelve Collections and the Teashop (2005)
- The Bridge (2006)
- Miss Tamara, The Reader (2006)
- Amarcord (2007)
- The Last Book (2007)
- Escher’s Loops (2008)
- The Ghostwriter (2009)
- The Five Wonders of the Danube (2011)
- The Grand Manuscript (2012)
- The Compendium of the Dead (2015)
- The Image Interpreter (2016)
- The White Room (2022)
Živković is one of the most translated contemporary Serbian writers. By the mid-2023 there were 126 foreign editions of his books of fiction, published in 25 countries, in 21 languages.
He has won several literary awards for his fiction. In 1994 his novel The Fourth Circle won the Miloš Crnjanski award. In 2003, Živković’s mosaic novel The Library won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. In 2007 his novel The Bridge won the Isidora Sekulić award. In 2007 Živković received the Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša award for his life achievement in literature, and in 2014 and 2015 received three awards for his contribution to the literature of fantastika: Art-Anima, Stanislav Lem and The Golden Dragon.
The prestigious US literary magazine World Literature Today brought out a special section on Živković’s writing in the November/December 2011 issue.
In 2005, Belgrade TV station ”Studio B” produced ”The Collector” TV series, based upon his mosaic novel Twelve Collections. In 2007, notable Serbian film author Puriša Đorđević directed the film ”Two”, based on Živković’s fictional themes, as well as the short film “The Confessional”, based on one of the Impossible Encounters short stories.
Two of his stories were produced as radio broadcasts by the BBC: “The Train” (2005) and “Alarm Clock on the Night Table” (2007).