Miha Mazzini


Miha Mazzini is a Slovenian writer, screenwriter and film director with thirty published books, translated in ten languages. He has a PhD in anthropology from the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis and has MA in Creative Writing for Film and Television at the University of Sheffield. He is a voting member of the European Film Academy.

Biography and works

Mazzini described his childhood in Titoist Yugoslavia, in three novels. The protagonist of the 2002 novel, King of the Rattling Spirits, is 12 years old. In the 2015 novel, Childhood, the protagonist is five. In the third novel It's Personal, the protagonist sums up his childhood and its consequences.
His first novel Crumbs was set in his hometown of Jesenice and published in 1989 and sold 54,000 copies.
He was the first Slovenian writer to write a novel about the erased, people who lost all of their rights and legal status after the declaration of the country's independence in 1991. Later he adapted the novel for the feature film [Erased (2018 film)|Erased].
His historical novel Paloma Negra deals with Yu-Mex music in the 1950s, when Yugoslav singers started mimicking the songs and music they saw in Mexican films. During the research for the novel, Mazzini recorded the stories told by protagonists and made a documentary called Yugoslav Mexico. The novel German Lottery is set in the same era but deals with swindlers, illusions and unreliable protagonists.
Mazzini introduced in the post-1990 Slovene literature a tough protagonist, characteristic of Noir fiction, in his novel Guarding Hanna.
His work was selected for international anthologies; including his short story "Mother" included in Contemporary European Fiction, and "Avro Lancaster" in Best European Fiction 2018.

Awards

The ''Cartier Project won the 1987 Best Novel of the Year award from both pro-government and opposition newspapers.
In 2012, one of his stories received the Pushcart Prize.
Mazzini won the 2016 Kresnik Award for his novel Otroštvo.
in 2019 he won best screenplay for the film Erased'' at FEST festival, Belgrade, Serbia, and at the Raindance festival, London, UK.

Reviews

Commentary

In October 2019, Mazzini commented on the decision of the Swedish Academy to give the Nobel Prize for literature to Peter Handke by saying, "some artists sold their human souls for ideologies, some for hate, some for money and power but the one that offended me the most was Handke with his naivety for the Milošević regime I found him cruel and totally self-absorbed in his naivety."

Novels in English

A Very Simple Story is a script in multiple languages, read by actresses from different countries. Mazzini was the screenwriter and director of both the Slovenian and Italian films. The project was nominated for the Prix Europe award.