BARBI MARKOVIĆ
WATCH THE TALK WITH BARBI MARKOVIĆ HERE.
Born in Belgrade in 1980.
Marković lives in Vienna since 2009. Studied German Studies in Belgrade and Vienna, and was editor at the Rende publishing house in Belgrade, where her first book, Izlaženje, was published in 2006.
Marković is the author of short stories, plays, and audio plays. In 2009, Izlaženje, a remix novel of Thomas Bernhard’s story Gehen (“Walking”), was published in German under the title Ausgehen.
Superheldinnen (2016) is the first novel that she has partly written in German.
Barbi Marković received the Alpha and Adelbert-von-Chamisso awards for the German edition of the novel Superheroines. The adaptation of Superheroines was staged at the Volkstheater in Vienna
The Serbian edition of Barbi Marković’s novel Superheroines was published by Arhipelago, and translated by Maria Glišić.
The three heroines in the novel Superheroines live in Vienna, hang out all the time and try to make sense of their lives together. They are deeply immersed in hectic modern urban living. However, they very consciously consider both the conditions of their existence as well as the dynamics and character of the cities that they perceive to be the great stages of their lives, experiences and challenges.
These heroines thereby have a living sense of contemporary events, whether that concerns politics and society, fashion and marketing, or even their previous individual histories before they came to Vienna.
Encounters in Viennese cafes and taverns represent the backbone of their social lives as well as the impetus for numerous stories where the features of European cities become visible: from Vienna to Belgrade, from Sarajevo to Berlin. With their eyes wide open, each of the superheroines in this novel study the various layers of the cities they find themselves in or spent time in the past, they follow and understand the graffiti, street signs and political and marketing campaigns, thus revealing the true nature of the cities and the essence of the challenges they face.
With Superheroines, Barbi Marković offers a true literary work of contemporary pop culture: scathing critiques of societies of excessive consumption and an indulgence in the saddest aspects of urban life. Barbi Marković writes quickly and dynamically with humor that’s black, ironic and even dystopian.
Superheroines is urban prose with a fast-paced and raw form, marked by short chapters and a story that is interrupted by advertising slogans and shifts of venue: we move between Vienna, Belgrade, Berlin. Superheroines is a story told with universal language that testifies of the society we all know and recognize – with these words the French publisher announces the publication of Barbi Marković’s book.
