Aleksandar Novaković
Aleksandar Novaković (Serbian-Cyrillic: Александар Новаковић; born 9 January 1975 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia) is a Serbian writer and playwright. Life and Work. Aleksandar Novaković grew up in his native place, attended the XII. Belgrade Gymnasium in Voždovac city quarter and graduated with maturity diploma in 1994, then he began studying at the department of history of the Philosophical Faculty of Belgrade’s University and graduated in 2002 with diploma. He changed to the University of Arts and continued his education in theater studies and dramaturgy. In 2007, Novaković (magister since 2006) was supported by "John McGrath scholarship" of  the University of Edinburgh. In 2012, he obtained his doctorate with thesis on "Strangers as dramatis personae in Serbian drama 1734-1990" (Stranci kao dramatis personae u srpskoj drami 1734-1990). Novaković currently lectures on theater history and dramatic theory at the "New Academy of Arts" since 2014. The writer published profiles on LinkedIn as well as Facebook, he uploads different videos as "Alasdair MacFearnua" to YouTube (Alasdair means Alexander; MacFearnua is a composition of prefix Mac, fear means man and nua means new: an obvious allusion to the meaning of his surname Novaković), edits the blog "Nowakowsky - My Life , My Writing" and his personal website is focused on his multifaceted literary work. He has also been writing for Radio Belgrade for some years and his personal selection of recorded broadcasts is available on Mixcloud. The artist has also been creative as a guitarist in bands for many years and some of the musical tastings can be heard on Bandcamp. The author of eight novels is also a member of the editorial board of the Serbian web magazine "Eckermann", named after the close confidant of Goethe, the author of the work "Dichtung und Wahrheit" (Poetry and Truth). The German word  Dichtung can be used synonymously for fiction or falsehood. Reading Novaković's novels is a time travel into the past, the future or the present, but in any case they usually include stories of people and their personal way to falsehood and truth of own life in search of happiness and authentic self-fulfillment. No matter, whether a reader is accompanying the Serbian journalist on his trip to Scotland like in the novel "Celtic tales" or meeting a young playwright like in the novel "Glacier", studying a future despot and his power politics in the year 2030 in the book  Novo Smederevo or getting told the story about the "Glorious One" Duško Popović, a volunteer of Spanish civil war with biographical details from the real life of Božidar Petrović, all works of the writer are worth to be discovered. The award-winning novel "The Leader" tells about an unscrupulous and inhumane officer of the Royal Serbian Army and his handling of his recent past (Balkan wars). The historian Novaković concentrates the plot to a certain day: the Vidovdan of the year 1914, when the assassination of the Austrian heir apparent took place in Sarajevo. The content of the novel is  a rejection of justifying arguments by representatives of Greater Serbian ideology as well as of violence and war as political means and exposes various arguments of nationalist conspiracy theorists as stereotypical absurdity. The manuscript of his unpublished novel "Regulator" has been nominated for the final selection of the Miroslav Dereta Award of the same named publishing house in 2007. It would be desirable for the writer to be presented to a wider reading public in Europe with translations in various languages. Aleksandar Novaković's short stories, satires, poems, reviews, political articles and essays has also been published in newspapers and  magazines such as "NIN", "Književne vertikale", "Koraci", "Lipar", "Reč", "Polja", "Zbornik Matice srpske", "Afirmator", "Beton", "Povelja", "Kvartal", "Braničevo" and some others. An aphorism of the artist, multiple laureate of twelve literary awards and former member of "Aphoristic Circle Belgrade" (Beogradski aforističarski krug) shall be cited finally: "The truth is somewhere between, just that it is much closer to our side" (Istina je negde između, samo što je mnogo bliža našoj strani). Novaković was an active member of Serbian DiEM25 from June 2016 to June 2021 when he left the movement. He is one of the signatories of a petition in  support of the former director of the National Library of Serbia, who was removed from office in 2012 because of political reasons. Among the signatories were personalities such as Filip David, Nenad Prokić, Mirko Đorđević and Biljana Srbljanović. The writer is also signatory of the declaration on the common language of the project "languages and nationalisms". The declaration is against political separation of four Serbo-Croatian standard variants that leads to a series of negative social, cultural and political phenomena in which linguistic expression is enforced as a criterion of ethno-national affiliation and as a means of political loyalty  in successor states of Yugoslavia. Black Four - Crna četvorka (Zona satire, electronic book, 2007) "Troknjižje" ( with Marko Bačanović and Patrik Weiss) , (Književne vertikale, Belgrade, 2020)