Zoran Drvenkar was born in Krizevci, Croatia, but at the age of three accompanied his parents to Berlin. He grew up in the multicultural district of Charlottenburg, and from the age of 15 devoted himself mainly to hanging out with his pals, playing football, and – increasingly – writing. He found school boring, and failed his Abitur. He took on temporary jobs, e.g. at a kindergarten and a health food shop, and worked freelance for a few months for the Berliner Tagesspiegel, where he first met Paul Maar, later to become a professional colleague and sponsor. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he decided to leave Berlin for a while, and went initially to Bavaria and then (1991-1994) to the Netherlands, where he lived in a caravan. In 1995 he returned to Berlin, and he now lives in a converted mill on the outskirts of the city. Since 1989 he has earned his living as a freelance writer. His work is set in the present, and consists mainly of novels, poems, plays and short stories. When he was still a young writer making his way, he was awarded several grants by the Berlin Senate, had contracts with the Berliner Künstlerförderung, and twice won the Alfred Döblin Scholarship awarded by the Berlin Akademie der Künste. Widely read and also an inveterate film buff, he enjoys working in a variety of genres, ranging from children’s books to thrillers, from science fiction to murder mysteries, and he writes both for young people and for adults. Drvenkar doesn’t like pigeon-holing literature according to age groups, and he writes only to be read, not to teach people a lesson. This may well be the reason why critics often say that he has introduced ‘a new tone’, and they call him an innovator or a ‘young savage’. In 2004 he wrote a children’s book entitled Die Kurzhosengang [The Gang in Short Trousers] under the pseudonym of Victor Caspak & Yves Lanois, and in 2005 it was awarded the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.

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Titelliste:

• Cengiz und Locke
• Der einzige Vogel, der die Kälte nicht fürchtet
• Die Kurzhosengang
• Die Kurzhosengang und das Totem von Okkerville
• Du hast doch keine Angst, oder?
• Kai zieht in den Krieg und kommt mit Opa zurück
• Letzte Ausfahrt Görlitzer Park
• Magdeburg hieß früher Madagaskar
• Paula und die Leichtigkeit des Seins
• Traumpaar

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