In good company
Predrag Crnković, Ivan Kušan and Zlatko Crnković in Zagreb, May 2008
Ivan Kušan (born August 30, 1933) is a Croatian writer. Ivan Kušan was born in Sarajevo, in the family of Jakša Kušan, bookstore owner and one of the most respected members of local intelligentsia. The family moved to Zagreb in 1939. At the age of 10 Ivan Kušan discovered his writing talent and wrote his first novel.
Later, Ivan Kušan discovered taste for world travel and visual arts. In 1950s he worked on Radio Zagreb. From 1980 to 1994 he taught at Drama Arts Academy of University of Zagreb. Ivan Kušan published his first book in 1956. His specialty became children's novels, and some of them, like Lažeš, Melita and Koko u Parizu, became very popular. In a later stages of his writing career Kušan found taste for erotic fiction. He also wrote a novel about famous outlaw Jovo Stanisavljević Čaruga, later adapted into 1991 motion picture. Ivan Kušan was married twice and has one son from first marriage.
Zlatko Crnković (Čaglin near Požega, May 11th, 1931), is a renowned Croatian translator, writer, literary critic and an editor.After finishing primary school in Čaglin, he continues his education in Croatian capital Zagreb, where he graduated English and German language and literatures at the Faculty of Philosophy. He studied American literature at the University of California, Berkeley during the year 1961/1962. Crnković has been engaged in translation from German, English, Russian and French. During the 25 years of work, he served as an editor at the publishing centre Znanje and signed 260 titles of the edition HIT, about 160 titles of the edition ITD, about 80 books in the edition Evergrin, and a series of anthologies, selected works and special editions.He is officially retired since 1994, but continues to translate and edit books for various publishers, especially for Algoritam. Algoritam gave him his own edition Zlatko Crnković vam predstavlja ("Presented to you by Zlatko Crnković"), in which he signed fifty pieces so far. After the retirement, he decides for cleaning up the documentation he collected over the years, which has resulted in a series of essays in 1998 Knjige moga života ("The books of my life") and selected letters exchanged with Ivan Aralica Pisac i njegov urednik ("The writer and his editor"). He published his own memoire prose Prošla baba s kolačima (2002) and a collection of miscellaneous writings Knjigositnice (2003). Knjiga snova ("The book of dreams") was published in 2003, and a selection of letters, exchanged with Ivan Kušan, in 2006 under the title Oko Sljemena i globusa. He received the prize of the Association of Translators in 1971 and 1986, and the Kiklop award in 2006 as the editor of the year.
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On the picture bellow, thanks to a nervous waiter in café CICA in Tlkalčićeva street, in Zagreb in may of 2009, you can see an impressionistic-surrealistic picture of Predrag Crnković and Rade Jarak.
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In this café, nevetheless, there was born an idea of a novel in four hands.
