Goran Tribuson

Croatian prose and screenplay writer (born 1948)

Goran Tribuson (; born August 6, 1948, in Bjelovar) is a Croatian prose and screenplay writer. Tribuson received his B. A. in literature from the Philosophical Faculty in Zagreb and his M. A. in filmology at the University of Zagreb. He worked for the Vjesnik Marketing Agency, and was a coeditor and revisor of the Croatian Lexicon. He teaches screen writing at the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Arts. Along with Pavao Pavličić, Tribuson is the most productive and the most popular Croatian writer from the mid 1970s to the present day. From the point of view of style, genre and subject matter Tribuson's work can be divided in several phases which all have in common the author's concern for the reader for whom he is writing, a compact plot, a great writing skill and the avoidance of any ideology. Tribuson is equally skilled in the application of postmodernist techniques: persiflage, quotes, intertextuality, autoreference, metatextuality etc. His writing is influenced by rock and pop culture, film and sometimes even jazz. His literary models are Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene and Karel Čapek. He lives in Zagreb.

Tribuson began writing and publishing short stories in various magazines while he was still at college. As a subversive reaction to the superimposed social realism in Croatian literature a generation of fantastical writers emerged in the early 1970s, and Tribuson was part of it. He is still considered to be one of the most prominent representatives of this movement. His early fantastical stories were published in three collections, Zavjera kartografa (The Cartographists Conspiracy, 1972), Praška smrt (Death in Prague, 1975) i Raj za pse (Dog Heaven, 1978). Mysticism, the occult and horror are some of the themes of these stories. Thematically, the novel Snijeg u Heidelbergu (Snow in Heidelberg, 1980) belongs to the same fantastical cycle, although it also marks the beginning of a new phase. Critics consider it one of the best works of the fantastical writers' generation. It is a kind of mixture of the sotonic and the picaresque. Tribuson returns to the fantastical and the grotesque in several other works: in his novel Potonulo groblje (Sunken Cemetery, 1990), which is considered to be a contemporary version of the gothic novel and which got him the "K. Š. Gjalski" literary award; in the novel entitled Sanatorij (Sanatorium, 1993), as well as in the collection of short stories entitled Zvijezda kabarea (Star of the Cabaret, 1999), in which he emerges as a fully mature writer of the so called fantastical prose. The 1980s mark the beginning of Tribuson's so called Aschenreiterov cycle which, in addition to the already mentioned ones, includes the novels Čuješ li nas Frido Štern (Do You Hear Us, Frida Štern, 1981) and Ruski rulet (Russian Roulette, 1982) subtitled "a boulevard novel", and erases the boundaries between the so called "highbrow" and "lowbrow" literature. The third cycle comprises Tribuson’s autobiographical writings, the best known among them being a trilogy of "generation" novels: Polagana predaja (Slow Surrender, 1984), Legija stranaca (Foreign Legion, 1985) and several editions of the bestselling Povijest pornografije (History of Pornography, 1988), which deals with the theme of growing up in a small town, the emergence and disappearance of youthful illusions and ideals, the confrontation of socialism with the unstoppable breakthrough of rock, pop culture, film and media. This cycle of varying quality includes, among other things, autobiographical prose works such as Rani dani (Early Days, 1997), Trava i korov (Grass and Weed, 1999) and Mrtva priroda (Still Nature, 2003). These are witty, ironic, clever and often fragmentary writings about the author's family history which is intertwined with history in general. Thematically the cycle includes the humorous novel Ne dao Bog većeg zla (God Save Us From Greater Evil, 2002), written after the production of the film with the same title, for which Tribuson wrote the screenplay. His fourth cycle consists of "pure" crime novels in the manner of the American hard boiled school: in his interviews, Tribuson repeatedly asserted that "a crime novel can either be a stylistic exercise or a social novel; if it is just an exercise, I am not interested in it". Thus, in the six novels published so far (Zavirivanje/Peaking 1985; Siva zona /The Grey Zone 1989; Dublja strana zaljeva /The Deeper End of the Bay 1991; Noćna smjena /Night Shift 1996; Bijesne lisice /Rabid Foxes 2000; Gorka čokolada /Bitter Chocolate 2004), structured as detective stories featuring P. I. Nikola Banić he has given a historical panorama of the Croatian society, from the beginning of the fall of socialism to the ups and downs of the transitional period. Tribuson has not only given literary legitimacy to the crime genre in Croatian literature, he also bases novels of this genre on the everyday reality of the local community. Although his private investigator Nikola Banić, a Croatian version of Philip Marlowe, is a slightly unconventional detective type because he is a jazz fan, a beer drinker, a dedicated smoker and a man burdened with many family problems, he has become very popular among the readers. Tribuson is the most popular Croatian writer of his generation. Critics sometimes consider him to be a populist writer, a writer who is too eager to please his audience with his genre novels. They therefore consider his fantastical novels to be his best. It is true, however, that Tribuson has produced works of anthological value in each of his cycles.