Miha Mazzini

Miha Mazzini (born 3 June 1961 in Jesenice, Yugoslavia) is a Slovenian writer, screenwriter and film director with thirty published books, translated in ten languages. He possesses 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 Voting member of the European Film Academy.

In his childhood, he was living with his mother and grandmother in Titoist Yugoslavia, which he later described in 2002 novel King of the Rattling Spirits, based on his 2001 Sweet Dreams film script.

Genre

Mazzini introduced in the post-1990 Slovene literature a tough protagonist, characteristic of Noir fiction, in his novel Guarding Hanna.

Awards

His Cartier Project was the all-time best-selling novel in Yugoslavia. It won the 1987 Best Novel of the Year award from both the pro-government and opposition newspapers.

Later his work was selected for many international anthologies, recently his short story Mother was included in Contemporary European Fiction anthology.

In 2012, one of his stories received the Pushcart Prize.

Mazzini won the 2016 Kresnik Award for his novel Otroštvo (Childhood).

Reviews

"In ... Guarding Hanna, [Mazzini] has created a bestial protagonist ... a gargoyle of a man [who] struggles heroically with his own nature only to find that life has played him one horrific joke."

—Village Voice

"[Hanna’s] a wonderful creation: vulnerable, lonely, trying to keep her mood upbeat but not always succeeding. In fact, she’s just the thing to melt the Beast’s hostility—or drive him, with her chatter, to homicidal distraction....Throw in the narrator’s grim musings on his lot in life and his occasional urge to strangle Hanna, and you have a tonic mix of menace and comedy that keeps things hopping right up to the book’s twist ending."

—Seattle Times

• Guarding Hanna (2003, a novel)
• The Cartier Project (2004, a novel)
• King of the Rattling Spirits (2005, a novel)
• Collector of Names (2009, a novel)
• German Lottery (2012, a novel)
• Crumbs (2014, a novel)
• Paloma Negra (2014, a novel)

• Mother (short story online)

• Cartier Project (1991, TV film, scriptwriter)
• You're Free. Decide. (1999, short film, scriptwriter and director)
• Sweet Dreams (2001, feature film, scriptwriter)
• The Orphan with the magic voice (2003, short film, scriptwriter and director)
• A Very Simple Story (2008, short film, scriptwriter and director)

A Very Simple Story script in multiple languages, read by actresses from different countries. Screenwriter and director of Slovenian (8:28) and Italian (9:57) film. Project was nominated for the Prix Europe award.