Hidden Camera

by Zoran Živković

A quiet, somewhat neurotic undertaker spends his days caring for his exotic fish, and of course his silent bodies as they arrive. One day, quite out of the ordinary, he receives a ticket to the movies. The movie, however, turns out to be of him, apparently filmed without his knowledge! Convinced that he is being targeted by a TV reality show, he plays along, only to be dragged from one adventure to the next, in a fantastic journey that evolves into a story of love, of death, and of ultimate creativity. And through his travails we discover new perspectives on our own roles in an increasingly insensitive and scripted world.

Zivkovic is one of the most translated contemporary Serbian writers. By the end of 2016 there were 86 foreign editions of his books of fiction, published in 23 countries, in 20 languages. He has won several literary awards for his fiction. In 1994 his novel The Fourth Circle won the Milos Crnjanski award. In 2003, Zivkovic's mosaic novel The Library won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. In 2007 his novel The Bridge won the Isidora Sekulic award. In 2007 Zivkovic received the Stefan Mitrov Ljubisa award for his life achievement in literature, and in 2014 and 2015 received three awards for his contribution to the literature of Art-Anima, Stanislav Lem and The Golden Dragon.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Mystery, Fantasy, Novels, Serbian Literature, Literary Fiction

198 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Zoran Živković was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, in 1948. In 1973 he graduated from the Department of General Literature with the theory of literature, Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade; he received his master's degree in 1979 and his doctorate in 1982 from the same school. He lives in Belgrade, Serbia, with his wife Mia, who is French, and their twin sons Uroš and Andreja. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philology. He's received plenty of awards, one of them being the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella (The Library, 2003).

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

We modern people live in two worlds. Firstly, there’s the physical, tangible world where we eat, sleep, work and deal with family and friends within a particular locale. But superimposed on this first world, there is a second world, the world captured on camera. Oh, those omnipresent cameras filming people and everything else in photos, television, videos, movies.

Subsequently, very common for men and women on all point of the globe, from Los Angeles to Tokyo to Calcutta to Belgrade, to fantasize they themselves are movie actors, celebrities, great athletes or taking center stage in their very own television show. Doesn’t matter if it’s a reality show or acting on a set, the main thing is to be the person forever worthy of the attention of others, always and at all times valued by the camera lens - in a word, to be a star.

With Hidden Camera, Serbian author Zoran Živković has written a very funny novel about the interplay of these two worlds. However, it should be noted, the story’s humor is of a distinctly Eastern European variety, reminding a reader of such classics as Bohumil Hrabal’s Closely Watched Trains or Nicolai Gogol’s The Nose or Vladimir Voinovich’s The Fur Hat.

Turning to the tale itself, we have an unnamed undertaker living alone on the third flood of a city apartment building. Several years from retirement, he enjoys listening to soothing, mellow music on his CD player, caring for and watching his tropical fish and maintaining his clean and tidy, modest and reserved lifestyle. Constant contact with the dead year after dismal year has taught him life’s stark reality – the body turns to ashes and that’s it; very wise to keep one’s desires simple and squeeze out moments of enjoyment we might be granted in this lifetime.

Yet today he must deal with something out of the ordinary – an unknown sender has wedged an envelope in his door. Upon opening, he discovers he’s been given a ticket to a private showing at the Film Archives at 6:00 this very evening. No further information is provided, not surprising in these times of general commercialization.

Arriving at the theater several minutes late, he’s expecting a reprimand for his tardiness but quite the contrary, the short, stocky, fifty-something doorman’s ruddy face brakes into a smile and he waves the undertaker in without even collecting his ticket. To his surprise, the entire auditorium is empty except for a woman in a navy blue suit wearing a wide-brimmed navy blue hat seated down in the middle of the sea of empty seats. A svelte young usherette with short hair and large glasses appears and leads him to his seat next to the woman.

The film begins: a man is sitting on a bench reading a book. He watches for several minutes then it hits him like a jolt – the man on the bench is him! Then a woman approaches and takes a seat on the bench. Strange, he doesn’t recall such a happening. And that woman – none other than the very woman sitting next to him in the theater. Another few minutes passes and the woman stands and walk off. End of film. Unlike the usual lights, the auditorium remains in pitch black. But then when the lights do come on he spots another envelope that has slid off his lap. He picks it up and leaves the theater.

A bit puzzled and shaken, our undertaker locates a small restaurant. While eating his soup, he surmises all of what he just experienced was a set up - someone had great fun positioning a hidden camera in the park so they could film him on that bench. And his watching the film at the Film Archives was also undoubtedly part of the prank.

Meanwhile, he reads what is in the second envelope: Ex Libris secondhand bookstore at 7:00. He knows he'll never make it in time but when he looks for a taxi - just so happens the taxi that pulls up has a "free taxi" sign on its roof. What luck! Off he zooms. Hey, this driver is devil-may-care reckless. He's tossed side to side in the back seat as if in a vaudeville slapstick show. When the taxi screeches to a halt at the bookstore he sees the driver is none other than the doorman from the theater wearing a different uniform and sporting a fake mustache.

At this point he realizes he was taken for a fool - he assumed the next episode with the camera would be in the bookstore. He should have known - his taxi ride was also part of the show, and a rollicking sidesplitter, at that. From this point forward, he must remain on his guard at all times.

Then when he enters the bookstore, although her hair appears a little longer and she isn't wearing glasses, no doubt about it: the girl reading at the cash register is none other than the usherette from the Film Archives. With such theatrical maneuverings, we as readers anticipate an escalation of both absurdity and humor and we are not disappointed - the undertaker's escapades in the bookstore would make for a topnotch over-the-top clown skit.

And the bookstore is only for starters. Our undertaker is destined for many more bizarre and outlandish predicaments, prompting him to reflect in a future scene: “Had I let paranoia get the upper hand? When you realize you’re the target of a hidden camera show, the worst thing that happens is you can’t get rid of your distrust.”

Shifting to the philosophical, we can ask: Why doesn’t Vlado speak up and ask why is all this happening to him? (Once I got into the novel, I felt a certain kinship with the undertaker, thus the name.) And why, Vlado, do you assume the only explanation is a hidden camera? Are you so completely wedded to being the center of attention that you are unwilling to consider other alternatives? Also, Vlado, is it necessary to take these somewhat sinister encounters as a personal challenge to outwit their creators? Is life automatically reduced to a psychic soccer match?

Yet, before we are too harsh, it must be conceded Vlado undergoes a transformation of sorts, a softening of the hard edges of his life by means of something akin to beauty, a beauty that just might touch on love. Also, there's that time when he muses: "Many years before, when I'd just started working as an undertaker, I'd been briefly enthralled with the idea of writing a book. It was supposed to be a melodrama. I had the subject worked out to the finest detail in my head. It was a very romantic and exciting story. About love and death. A very successful film could have been based on it. But nothing came of it because I got stuck on the title. I couldn't start writing without a proper title."

Hidden Camera can be seen as a meditation on how we perceive and interpret the world around us. What does it take for the fantastic to gradually become the accepted norm? Unlike a simple TV episode, nobody in the novel pops up to say, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera.” Quite the contrary – similar to the ultimate questions of our human condition: Where do we come from? Why are we here? What happens when we die? - answers are not so easily forthcoming. Thus along with the tale’s humor and absurdity there’s an undeniable sense of subtlety and nuance. Most appropriate since, after all, in the end, life is simply not that simple.

On this note, I'll let the author himself have the last word. In an interview, Zoran Živković has stated: “With its specific humor of the paranoid, Hidden Camera inaugurated another pivotal motif: the idea of art and love as our ultimate line of defense against mortality. Eros and Thanatos perform an intricate dance in this novel. Without humor, its choreography would be too macabre, not, as seemed to me far more proper, a delicate ballet."


Serbian author Zoran Živković, born 1948

[BlackOxford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curative Psychosis

I think it best to take Živković’s ironic tragi-comedies seriously. This is a serious book of moral philosophy. And it’s not a bad 21st century version of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, less the Victorian sentimentality.

It is an unwritten and undiscussed iron law of modern society that anyone who starts a business or enters a career will end up being dominated and crushed by that business or career. There are no exceptions to this rule, which is mitigated neither by the size nor type of the activities involved (including writing as a business), nor by the initial interest or passion which launches it, nor by the intentions one might have to ‘balance’ one’s life.

The business will win by consuming 100% of all the energy, talent, emotion and other resources available. Then it will demand more to ensure its own survival. Family, friends, and whatever other interests one has are all expendable. What starts as ambition eventually becomes compulsion. Even if it dies a commercial death, the business will win by continuing to drain its founder, probably until he or she dies. If the business itself is about death, its triumph will be ironic as well as decisive.

At some point this social law becomes apparent to the one who has committed himself irrevocably to a business or career. The situation is worse than the recognition of a failed marriage since there is no one with whom to share the blame. There is, therefore, an inevitable moment of solitary panic, the response to which is either to rationalise the situation as temporary (which it isn’t) or to confront reality, that is to say, to have a mental breakdown.

The latter is the option chosen by Živković’s protagonist. He has already decided that he cannot continue his life as an undertaker. Early retirement means less money, but at least he will get his life back from a business and a profession he has grown to hate. It is this decision which precipitates what can be characterised as psychotic behaviour in a man who lives for his tropical fish and his music.

The symptoms of what is actually a healthy psychosis start with the (illusory) acceptance to and participation in what turns out to be a cinematic revelation of what he has become, namely a neurotic obsessive, disconnected from the world of the living. This is not a condition he acquired through his profession as undertaker Rather, it is the condition which led him to that profession in the first place. His life, perhaps all our lives, are based on just such neurotic choices. Once made, they simply reinforce the psychological defect and ensure its dominance. Our neuroses become, as it were, embodied and institutionalise themselves as our place in the world.

His breakdown takes the form of an intense paranoia. How could it be otherwise since he has always had a fear of living people? But those watching him, filming him, and harassing him with strange invitations are not other people; they are, of course, himself who is perfectly aware, if only subliminally, of his situation and its causes. It is he who decides the necessity of frenetically rushing from place to place, of eating on the run, of allowing the minor irritants of living to obscure the general condition of his life, of interminable calculations of competitive risk and benefit. But he cannot admit to being his own tormentor. Which of us can?

As with many dreams, his delusions are cryptically instructive. To be more explicit might cause cataleptic shut-down. Meaning must therefore be teased out of events. What look like traps are clues. He isn’t forced to take these clues but he does. His sub-conscious instinct insists. A lady in purple, a sort of Dante’s Beatrice, appears and disappears. Why? To entice? To comfort? To guide? In any case as a sort of Jungian anima which is actually part of himself. She helps him dig out those things that are most deeply buried, those archaic reasons which provoked his arrival to his current state. This is why he feels paranoid. He is being watched, assessed, judged... by himself. This is the rationality of his psychosis. Nothing could be more frightening.

Starting from the good look at himself on film, progressing to the ‘book’ of his life, and on to experience the ‘death’ of pre-birth, he regresses himself to a purely physical state, an animal in a zoo. Throughout his inner journey, he is propelled by the persistent frightening memory of the image of himself, so different, so alien from his self-image. Among other animals his pretensions and affectations become useless. An animal does not have rational abilities. It can only wait and respond instinctively to events. Clues are, therefore, meaningless and stop altogether.

In this primitive state, he is led into the underworld. It is here that he starts to take charge, to lead by the light of his real self. As he emerges from the underworld with the help of the purple Beatrice, he starts losing bits of his past, starting with his watch which has been broken. He is baptised in a hot shower and is restored. As are his clothes which had been cleaned and pressed, his shoes shined, and, miraculously, his watch works again. It remains for him then to learn, or to un-learn, how to see. Not as an observer, but as a participant. In doing so he crosses a boundary into a world he hasn’t known about that has been operating in parallel to his own isolated world.

After a complex celebratory meal in a church, including a balletic floorshow, he steps forth into the darkness, into what could be a cemetery. He sees his purple Beatrice literally melt in front of him, as she does so becoming progressively younger until she is an infant who simply turns into rivulets of water. Just outside the gates of the cemetery, he finds his funeral parlour, for which he no longer feels disgust. His feelings now are for the sensitivities of his customers.

His psychotic episode is now over and it has been productive. He will continue in his business, but for different reasons than those he started with. He will also write a book that connects that business to eternity: “I hoped that it wouldn’t be difficult to write about love and death. They are my world, after all. Besides, the obstacle that had stood in my way long ago no longer existed. I now had an excellent title.” Sometimes the title is all you need.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

A cerebral thriller and anti-communist parable, using illusion and irony to polemicize the paranoia and suspicion surrounding the Balkan conflict.

Also heavily interpretable: I saw the glib undertaker's trip as a form of spiritual rebirth. An appreciation for the beauty of life in a cold and heartless world. (Aww.) A truly amazing book. Highly readable and playful.

[RandomAnthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

I get the feeling Zoran Zivkovic loved writing Hidden Camera. I don’t know much about the author but apparently he writes mostly fantasy and this was a departure from his usual work. Sometimes, however, authors should, ahem, stick to their day genres. I thought Hidden Camera was ok but maybe too sparse and jumbled for a higher rating.

Hidden Camera reads like a cross between Gogol and Murakami but contains neither the energy of the former nor the meditative playfulness of the latter. One scene from this novel (the underground one) seemed nearly identical to a scene in Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but, well, see Murakami’s book for an example of how to do this type of thing right.

Reading this novel felt like living in a grey Eastern European city where weird shit happens. And it’s not like, at least in my perception, the weird shit in Hidden Camera ever connected in any meaningful way I could discern. Sure, there’s something there about death and birth and undertakers and babies and polar bears and wine and ice. But there’s a fine line between asking the reader to do the tough work of creating her own meaning and just…well…throwing a load of images together and hoping meaning emerges. Sometimes the puzzle just isn’t worth the time. I felt frustrated more often than not while reading Hidden Camera. Now, there were some redeeming elements, namely the fine-tuned voice of the narrator’s inner monologue and one beautiful scene near the novel’s end. Neither were enough to elevate the book from “ok” to “good”.

I read Hidden Camera a couple pages at a time, then put the book down after thirty pages or so, then picked up the book again and read the last ninety pages over one Saturday. If you can I’d recommend reading the text quickly. The novel’s action takes place over the course of an evening and a quicker read seems to suit its design. Still, I read the last third of the book with the promise of its ending as much as the desire to engage with the text. Not a ringing endorsement, eh? Hidden Camera is ok. I didn’t hate it. But I can’t think of one friend to whom I would recommend the book despite the book’s wild movie theatre, crowded used bookstores, and zoo concerts. Some books, I’m afraid, just don’t live up to the promise of their premise.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the great things about simply wandering through the stacks at the public library is that you will, on occasion, discover a great writer of whom you had never previously even heard. Such was the case with this Serbian writer: I saw the spine of Hidden Camera and the unusual author's name and, intrigued, picked up the book. They say you can't judge a book by its cover: well, I often do, and I judged that this book, based on its cover and title, would be interesting, so I decided to check it out.

The back cover of this book describes Zoran Živković as writing "in the tradition of Borges and Calvino," and that description is apt; I would hasten to add that there is very much a touch of Franz Kafka in Hidden Camera, too.

Having noted the comparison to Calvino and finding the first few pages sufficiently realistic and yet still quite odd, I knew that this would be a novel whose ending would almost certainly leave me with questions, and still I decided to read on because the story was so fascinating, and my theory was proven correct: if you are seeking a story with a nice, tidy ending where all the mysteries are resolved and tensions dissipated, look elsewhere.

Darkness is a repeated motif throughout the novel, and it is always followed by some sort of illumination; however, at the end of the novel, we readers are left in darkness regarding an explanation for what really happened, and so it would seem that we must find the illumination ourselves.

***SPOILER ALERT*** The obvious reading is that, somehow, the narrator is guiding a child into this world, but this is too facile, for it would appear that the mysterious woman in the hat, who later becomes the newborn child, is, with the help of her two assistants, guiding the narrator, but even this reading is too shallow.

The narrator is an observer who is simultaneously being observed by a hidden camera. This hidden camera that is observing him and of which he is all too aware is, as I see it, the narrator's own self-reflection: at a higher level of reflection wherein the self observes that very self in action, the narrator is the hidden camera: he is watching himself, and he is explicitly aware that he is being watched, but he fails to realize that it is he who is watching himself: his mind, in my reading of this story, is creating everything that happens and that he observes, both as a first-hand observer and as a meta-observer of himself as observer. The novel that he discovers in the bookstore, which lists himself as the author and which lists a publication date five years in the future, indicates that the narrator is the author of his own tale, of this very tale, in fact.

The places that the narrator visits and entertainment that he is afforded are quite revealing: he sees a film; he browses a bookstore, he enjoys a piano and flute concert, he is provided a strangely facilitated enjoyment of a summer meadow (complete with the feel of the wind and the fragrance of the flowers), he enjoys a simple but delicious meal, he attends a performance by a ballet dancer. In short, he partakes of all the pleasures of high culture: art (the film and the ballet); literature; a Romantic, Wordsworth-esque experience of nature; and a gourmet meal. Fascinatingly, his enjoyment of each of these pleasures is surrounded by moments of darkness, fearfulness, and mystery, yet he always emerges from these places of anxiety into a place of peace, and the novel ends, although without full resolution, in a place of peace for the narrator.

The narrator is an undertaker (as he makes a point of telling us on numerous occasions), and the woman in the hat is, in my reading, all those whom he has buried: her face, as an adult, is never made clear to him, just like those he buries remain at a great impersonal distance to him. The discussion with the obstetrician on a life before birth and the novel's ending with the woman in the hat being born as a child show that it is, after all, the narrator who is guiding the woman in the hat. Because the narrator can clearly make out the face of the baby who had been the woman in the hat, he now connects with those he has buried: they are no longer just more bodies to be embalmed: they are faces of people that he might know, people that he might even have (as in the film sequence) sat next to on a park bench; they are personal beings with pasts and futures (futures?) of their own; they are souls, even. The cold rationality of the narrator, who believes in neither life after death nor life before birth, is undercut by the woman in the hat's birth, and all the strange, even supernatural-seeming elements, further undercut the rationalistic worldview of the narrator, and yet if all that occurs is just in his mind, then his worldview remains intact.

So, are we to take the text on its face and believe in the supernatural elements which are, without resorting to a deus ex machina impossible? Or do we see the novel as a journey in the mind of the narrator as he tries to bring some sense of peace and meaning to his dull, lonely, and rationalistic world? But who is to say what it is to take the text on its face? Can we not accept both interpretations simultaneously or perhaps even other interpretations that I have not here enumerated? Must we bring order from the chaos? Must we try to be the narrator and try to make rational sense of it all? (The narrator certainly failed in providing a rationalistic, sensible account.) That, I believe, is up to us as readers. The text gives us the geographical points, but there are many ways to journey between these points.

[Alice-Elizabeth (Prolific Reader Alice) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this on KU for Eurovisionathon 2020!

Country: Serbia

Thanks so much to Goodreads user Cintia for helping me to track down a book for the Serbia challenge square! Hidden Camera was one of those books that is both bizarre and strangely enjoyable. We follow a man that receives an invitation in the design form of a cinema ticket and ends up watching a short film clip that features himself. Then over the course of a single evening, realises that someone or something has been watching him and he travels to various locations across town where some of the strangest things happen to him. Thrillery, horror, paranormal and a little romantic, I was freaked out by the ending. I'm really surprised that only now have I read this book XD

[David Bjelland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Starts out seeming like it's trying to be "Pynchon written for a middle-school reading level", but that book would probably be more interesting than what we actually get with Hidden Camera - a series of disjointed, inexplicable scenes, with tediously repetitive transitions between each, and then a vaguely mystical-feeling but totally unearned twist finale.

Now, I am the last person on earth who would ever insist that a novel needs a "sensible" "plot" to work, but being trapped inside the narrator's head is like taking a guided tour of decaying suburbs - his thoughts lie on a predictable grid, each as lacking in vitality as it is in subtlety or perceptiveness.

Imagine shaking a magic-8 ball with 4 faces:
- "I am so smart and shall outwit my tormentors - surely *this* will throw them for a loop!"
- "Wowowow how is my cooly rational brain so powerless to overcome my curiosity?"
- "Gosh how strange and beautiful this all is"
- "Oh the chaos of it all! How I wish I were at home feeding the fish and folding a pile of freshly laundered t-shirts and underwear to my very exacting specifications"

Now imagine shaking it a hundred or so times and stringing together the results in a novelistic fashion.

Believe it or not, after the first ten-or-so shakes, the faux naïveté gets old.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

1/3 of the way in. Eastern European writers are TWISTED, man! Holy weirdness. Murakami with a dash of Hunter S. Thompson, hold the brevity if you please.

Update: Creepier, somehow funnier, and a bit more mesmerizing, yet in a boring way; Like watching a fish tank.

Weirder still: the fish and wine dinner in the church while watching the ballerina swim like a fish is the strangest scene of the book, and I couldn't even wrap my mind around the time warp ice melt woman turning to baby scene. What? I know, right? The weirdest book of all time.

[Lee Gingras · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yeah, I don't know. I was expecting more. It started off strong, wavered here and there, wandered off to the side, and whimpered to the finish. There are a lot of clues and hints that aren't followed through. The central premise of the book is pretty well executed, I think - life is strange, and that people will put up with comfortable routines is strange - but I think this book aspired to be more than it was.

[Larnacouer de SH · Rating 2 out of 5]

2002 yılında çekilmiş sanat filmini 2018 yılında esneyerek izlemek gibiydi.

Üstüne içeceğimin gazı kaçmış, mısırımın tuzu eksikmiş, başım çat diye çatlamak üzereymiș gibi.
Yazarın kalemi güzel fakat bıraktığı his tam olarak IT WAS OK.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read 10/5/11 - 10/12/11
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended
Pgs: 217
Publisher: Dalkey Archive

Every once and awhile, I stumble across a blog post or lit magazine article listing "the best books you're not reading". I discovered Hidden Camera by just such a list, though you'll have to forgive me for not remembering who wrote it and where I read it.

How this book flew so far under my radar for so long (it was originally published back in 2003, and rereleased in 2005) is beyond me, since it's right up my alley in terms of writing style.

This cerebral novel takes place over the course of just one evening - beginning when our rather bland, home-bodied narrator returns home from his job as an undertaker and carrying him through the night from one strange destination to another. This creepy scavenger hunt of sorts starts when our narrator finds an unmarked, unaddressed envelope stuffed into his door, requesting his presence at the Film Archive for an unnamed showing that takes place within the hour. Curious, after spending much of that hour mentally deconstructing the intent of the mysterious envelope and it's even more mysterious origins - our narrator heads out on foot to see what it's all about.

Upon his arrival, he discovers only one other person in the theatre, a woman whose face is obscured by a rather large brimmed hat. And the show they came to watch? Why, it's a movie of him sitting on a park bench during his lunch hour, reading a book, completely unaware that his is the subject of a hidden camera.

Once the film ends and the house lights come back on, in a state of confusion and mortification, he realizes that the woman is no longer seated beside him. In fact, she is no longer in the theatre. Baffling as that is, he is even more baffled upon noticing another unmarked envelope that sits on his lap inviting him to a second hand bookshop across town in less than an hour, and he suddenly becomes convinced that the hidden cameras are still rolling.

And so our narrator begins the seemingly endless and increasingly curious journey from bookshop, to zoo, to underground elevator, to a church and it's odd tombstones, all at the silent request of two strangers..... and all because he refuses to lose face and walk away from the opportunity to redeem himself in the eye of the camera, and in the hopes of encountering the woman in the large brimmed hat again.

This book is one incredibly amazing mind-fuck. Taking place almost completely within the mind of our undertaker, we experience everything in much the same way he does. There is very little conversation at all; in fact, our narrator takes extreme measures NOT to talk to anyone as he heads from one place to the next.

Is he going nuts, you wonder? Can this shit really be happening? Has he died, perhaps, and this is some freaky ass purgatory - which would be hilarious since he informs us that he doesn't see a link between death (something he is intensely close with) and birth (something he has no experience with, disregarding his own, which he cannot recall)? Or a dream? Yes, it must be a dream, right?!

The writing is wonderful; reminiscent of my favorite author, Jose Saramago, similar to him in the way he weaves an entire story out of one small, trivial thing.... In this case, an envelope tucked into a doorjam. Had the undertaker chosen to throw it away, like so much unwanted advertisements and junk mail, the story would have ended before it even began. It's the ease at which Zoran Zivkovic tells us the story, the pace at which it unravels itself, the subtle tension that eats away at your insides.. he hooks you before you even realize you took the bait.

Reader, beware.... look no further lest ye wish to be spoiled.....


You have been warned!





I have my theories. Knowing that our narrator is an undertaker and that he has strong beliefs - due to his line of work - that there is nothing after death, I found myself beginning to view the two strangers as ghosts before I was even aware of it. They seemed to know his every move, they seemed to anticipate what he would do next, and where he would end up. They are capable of moving silently, quickly, of setting up and breaking down "sets" without being seen or heard. They create impossible scenarios for our narrator, and yet they are possible because he is experiencing them. It just seemed otherworldly to me. In this light, it felt quite like a Christmas Carol, simply substitute Mr. Scrooge and his crappy attitude towards the human race and replace him with our narrator and his failure to see that there is activity after death. I saw these two strangers as the ghosts that show our narrator the error of his ways... instead of whisking him away from location to location, they tease him with envelopes and get him to go of his own accord, bait him with his own curiosity and polite manners.

Then I began viewing our narrator as the ghost. Perhaps he had died at work, and his spirit returned home to find the envelope - in a Sixth Sense kind of "I don't know I'm dead and I continue to believe I am still living" sort of way. The envelope then being a way to tether his spirit and force him to perform tasks, and come to terms with his own death, in order to cross over to the land of the dead. The woman in the large brimmed hat then being his spirit guide, a living person who was helping him cross over. And still, this sticks to my theory of him being shown that there is activity after death, since he is the ghost, the one with post-death experiences....

The ending was quite ambiguous and though that usually bothers me, for this book I was ok with it. Because while it doesn't tell you exactly what the heck was going on all night, it certainly makes me feel like what I thought was happening, one or the other of my theories, is still a possibility.

Have you read this? I would love to find out what you think of it, and what you took from it.

[John Pappas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Utterly compelling and darkly humorous, Hidden Camera presents us with a lonely, bumbling undertaker who receives a mysterious envelope, containing one movie ticket for a show that night, one evening as he returns home. Rushing to the cinema, he finds he is one of two people in attendance at a screening of a film that was secretly taken of him as he reads his book on a park bench. Thinking he is the star of a new kind of reality show, he races to show up at a series of unlikely places to which he is directed, all the while trying to figure out if he should resist his mysterious directives. His inflated sense of importance as well as his adherence to middle-class mores and mannerisms makes him a figure of satire, but not one devoid of our sympathies.

Absurd and noirish, as rendered by an author who has the wit, humor and paranoid sensibility of Kafka, the tonal acuity and pacing of Calvino and a dash of the political sensibilities of Ionesco, this tale, while funny and ironic, can be read as a searing critique of a bourgeois mentality that cripples and infantilizes citizens as they participate in and become complicit in their own oppression. It can also be read as a more general attempt to illustrate the pointless tasks which people assign themselves to occupy themselves as they contend with the possible meaninglessness of their existence. In either regard, this novel does not disappoint. I'll be mulling over the ending of this one for quite a while.

[Desirée · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

For me, this was the kind of book during which I was always thinking: Something great is just around the corner!! - but there just wasn't.

Zivkovic sends a protagonist on a strange kind of scavenger hunt. He keeps thinking he's on a Hidden Camera show, while the reader realises pretty quickly that there must be something else at work. Zivkovic does have a great sense for setting a scene (especially strange scenes, that are at once very weird and very beautiful) and making it come alive in front of the reader's eyes. That was a huge plus. But the succession of strange and beautiful scenes never became much more than just that, an almost random succession. Though, to be fair, there were motifs and themes that showed up again and again, and the author does try to bring it all together in the end. I just think that didn't work. Zivkovic tried to infuse the end with a lot of meaning, but the big revelations didn't seem very profound to me. I'm sorry I'm being this vage, but I don't want to spoil the end for anyone who still wants to read it.

Another thing that didn't work for me was the humour. The protagonist is an unhappy undertaker whose life is perfectly organised and who doesn't stray much from the very, very trodden path of his daily routine. Zivkovic tries to juxtapose his rigidity and his conventional thoughts with the increasing weirdness of his story. I think that was supposed to be funny, especially when it becomes clearer and clearer that he really can't be on a Hidden Camera show, while he insists on thinking just that. Wasn't funny to me, though, just a little implausible. Who would think of a Hidden Camera show while, for example, he is asked to come to the zoo at night and ends up in the bear pit?

I love that kind of strange story with beautiful imagery, but I prefer it if it's told by Haruki Murakami, David Lynch or José Saramago, because a) I have more fun with them, and b) after I close those books (or finish those movies) I have usually only just started to put together the pieces, and in the days to come, I find myself thinking about it all the time, finally putting together hidden layers of meaning. After I finished Hidden Camera, there was just a lot of 'I don't care.'

[Marleah (marleah_a) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reminded me of that movie "The Game" with Michael Douglas. The main character finds a letter stuck in his door - an invitation to a film screening. When he arrives at the theater, he is the only person there, except for a woman shrouded in shadow. As he watches the film, he realizes he is watching himself, sitting on a bench over his lunch break. After leaving the screening, he continues to be invited or brought to the next "scenario," and the paranoia and intrigue grows.

This premise was great, and I was really enjoying it and waiting for the reveal, up until the last chapter. It got very mystical and supernatural, and I got the impression that there was some greater message or symbolism there that I didn't really get. So I loved the ride, but not so much the ending. I wanted a real-world explanation but didn't get it.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

You've been invited to a special screening of a movie. You go because you have nothing better to do that night. Sitting down, nearly alone in the theater, the film begins. You recognize the setting and, then, you realize you're the star. It's a film of you eating lunch on a bench while reading. Then the movie ends. This is how the story in Hidden Camera begins. This is the quest of the main character (who remains nameless) to determine who has filmed him and why. And, probably more importantly, are they filming him now? What about... now?

There is a fun urgency to this novel. Once it starts you will want to discover the answers to the characters questions. As the character falls down the rabbit hole over the course of one rainy night in the city, he finds that every answer leads to more questions. The author does a good job of creating mounting paranoia and tension; the character thinks and rethinks every move wondering who is watching and who is judging him.

With all of the fun of getting to the climax of the book, I found the ending, for me, lacked the punch of other surrealist writers that I have enjoyed such as Haruki Murakami. It is only at the end that I came to understand how experimental this work truly is. I liked it, but it will not become a book I recommend widely.

Recommended for fans of Murakami and existentialism. Not recommended for lovers of straightforward fiction. This book will require your interpretation and a willful release of reality.

[Charlie Zoops · Rating 2 out of 5]

It started off as a good concept: An insecure man is confronted with an endless game of hidden cameras, paranoia, and undetermined destinations.

But there is only really one hidden camera, in the beginning.
There is no audience, no social consequences from the other hidden cameras,that don't exist outside of his mind.
There are overwhelmingly relentless descriptions that only add text to the page.
The situations are so fabricated and cliché that the book reads like a teen fantasy, and the narrator attempts to demystify what is going on by finding a practical explanation, which puts the author's artifice in negation, but not in a self criticizing way.

This book is similar to the film, "The Game" where a game is being played on someone else's reality, though without any stronger meaning, resolution. or any real dynamic between the characters.

The most interesting thing I found about the book, was how worried the main character was about everything that was going on. How afraid he was with breaking the law, overspending money, or how other people perceived him,
which made me wonder about Zoran Zivkovic. Is Zoran this insecure man that hides behind fantasy because he's afraid of dealing with more real situations. Does he get out his house much to find any greater depth in human interaction?

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmm, what to say about this? It started off well - man comes back from work to find envelope containing tickets inviting him to a film screening. He goes to the screening; it turns out to be a film of him sitting reading in the park, recorded by a hidden camera. Thus begins a trail of mysterious clues and a cat-and-mouse chase as he tries to catch-up with the people he thinks are behind it. However, it gets increasingly bizarre, has no resolution and the protangonist's irrational and foolish behaviour begins to grate pretty quickly. Way too abstract and Kafkaesque for me.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe 2.75 stars. I can't even decide whether or not I liked it. It wasn't bad. It was a sort of psychological thriller, without the thrill. I didn't find it suspenseful, but since I dislike suspense, that was OK with me. But I guess the main reason you keep reading is the same as the primary motive of the protagonist, which is to get to the end and get some sort of "reveal." We never get one. I have no idea what happened, and neither does our poor hero, which is terribly unsatisfying.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars, really. Nice, tense atmosphere, and good for one read, but not the kind of book that draws me back. I'd like to read more by Živković, though.

For a joint review of Mati Unt's Things in the Night and Zoran Zivkovic's Hidden Camera, go to:

http://www.jeffbursey.com/downloads/B...

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man becomes convinced he is being filmed and goes on a coincident filled nightime journey through his city. At times quite menacing and other times quite hilarious. Reminds me of Kobo Abe a lot.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I kept waiting for this book to blow my mind at the end, figuring that it was so strange it had to. It didn't.

[Calista]

Zoran Zivkovic's compelling and twisted novel, Hidden Camera (2003), is an Eastern European mystery fiction novel. The book opens with a simple-minded and lonesome narrator/undertaker, who comes home to find a mysterious envelope lying in his kitchen, inviting him to a private screening of a so-called new movie. When the narrator arrives at the theater, filled only with himself and a pretty woman, he notices that the showing that he is invited to, contains various scenes of him sitting in a park alone, engrossed in eating his lunch. While watching the movie, the narrator comes to the quick assumption that he is a new candidate for a hidden camera show that is geared to humiliate him. Being the inadvertent participant that he is, he is sent on "wild goose chases" racing all across the city, becoming ever more paranoid and leery wherever he goes, awaiting the perfect time to stage a rebellion against his 'hidden antagonists'". Zivkovic's text was riveting and suspenseful at times, long winded and complicated at some part; his work can be compared to bumps in the road. The flat parts of the road can be understood as the background and transitional parts of the story that were unorganized and often sparked a loss of interest for the reader, because of the unnecessary detail, but the bumps symbolize the the exciting and energetic points in the plot, that gets the reader's mind brewing and heart racing.
Throughout the novel, the undertaker feels a sense of watchfulness, like every move he makes, and every word he speaks, is being monitored by the "hidden camera" show, forcing him to come to the presumption that he was their next candidate. I agree with the narrator's assumption, because as the storyline progresses, he is being asked to meet at different landmarks all over town, and upon his arrival he is given cryptic messages, causing him to becomes vigilant of his every move and word, like he is about to be preyed upon by some wild beast. I also disagree with the part of the novel when the narrator has a "come to Jesus" with himself every time he falls for one of the "hidden camera's" tricks. "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me," it feels like an endless circle of doom: he finds a letter, goes to the destination, gets tricked, has a self-reflection. It is repetitive and unnecessary; if you have make the mistake once, how hard is it to avoid making that mistake again. In the novel, there are many references made to hidden camera television shows and their importance and popularity to not only the book, but among the rest of society during this time period.
The novel is symbolized as a game of cat and mouse, where one animal is trying to outsmart the other; much to the readers dismay, the game is too predictable. For example, the narrator arrives at a dark and dingy bookstore, thinking that he can outwit the camera men, he pretends to be searching for a book; how smart. Out of nowhere, he sees a light coming from a creepy looking closet; this is a major red flag, maybe he should just step away, but that would be the intelligent thing to do. He waltzes right in letting his guard down, and finds an intriguing book sitting on a table. All of a sudden, the door slams behind him, the lights go off, falling for the trap, he now looks like a fool, and on top of it all, the book disappears...(gasp). This constant back and forth between the protagonist and antagonist becomes very monotonous and dull, resulting in a loss of interest from the audience. I did however, agree with the author's theme of curiosity and the narrator's constant desire to know what's coming next. Curiosity plays a huge role in the outcome of the novel because whenever the character has his mind set on something, his judgment becomes clouded by the thought of what was going to happen next, or what else did these hidden tormentors have in store for him. The way that curiosity was implemented throughout the novel, gave the reader a sense of relatability and closeness to the main character. Illustrating how curiosity is a double edged sword: both good and bad. In the case of this book, curiosity allows the undertaker to better understand his opponent, and what they are trying to achieve from these confrontations; alas curiosity has also lead the narrator into some dark times and places, allowing the audience to feel a deeper connection to the narrator.
I have never read any books by Zoran Zivkovic, but I did some research on him before reading the book, and noticed that Zivkovic mostly writes fantasy novels, and Hidden Camera was his first novel outside of his "comfort zone." Despite the fact that I am not familiar with his other works, I feel that Hidden Camera was a well written novel for his first time in a new genre. On the other hand, I have read some books that are in a similar genre, and lets just say, I have read better. The book was exhilarating, somewhat humorous, and a bit mesmerizing; all wrapped up in a kind of monotonous way. Zivkovic's Hidden Camera, appeals to me in both an emotional and logical way. I connected to the book on an emotional level because of the main character's urge to know the unknown, or in other non-theological terms, curiosity. As mentioned a hundred times before, what makes us human, is to seek the knowledge that we lack. The love of being able to understand everything from top to bottom can only be achieved through the satisfaction of one's curiosity. This is the trait that I admire the most about the undertaker, even though he is a simple man, it is his curiosity that makes him more human. For example, whenever he receives those mysterious blank envelopes, his human intuition is to open it, but it is his own personal curiosity that invokes him to follow through with the instructions that are provided. I also connected to this book on a logical level, because the book is a mystery novel, hence I can't just read it word for word, I have to sometimes infer the meaning and purpose behind each action and message, similar to when reading the Bible, with the exception that this book has no religious undertones. All in all, I enjoyed reading this book, it has a little bit of everything for everyone; some suspense, a bit of humor, and a hint of tragedy. Although I do have one helpful note: this is not a book to just pick up every so often, if you are going to read it, read it in one sitting, then everything will make perfect sense.

[Andres2185 · Rating 5 out of 5]

MOP: empieza como un libro común y corriente una persona normal que poco a poco descubre hechos relacionados con personajes y con una idea inicial que poco a poco va cambiando. es una lectura dinámica y muy bien estructurada, te hace sentir lo que vive el personaje en todo su recorrido, donde la ficción y la realidad se cruzan al principio sutilmente, para luego desencadenar en un viaje al espacio tiempo y con tintes existencialistas.

[Cynthia Egbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am at a bit of a loss on what to say about this novel. I love this author and his crooked way of seeing the world. I really enjoyed the novel even as I understood that it must only be someone from a Communist bloc country who could write this weird, creepy, and yet spiritual tale. A jaded and cold undertaker who has allowed his surroundings and his job to remove hope from his soul is brought back to a place of hope in one night of intense craziness. This is actually a Serbian version of Dicken's A Christmas Carol and I will be pondering on it for a very long time.

One passage that I loved: "I purchased an aquarium in order to provide aquarium therapy for myself. The length of this aquarium therapy depended on how stressed I was. But even the greatest stress would finally start to ease before the soundless, chaotic movement of colorful shapes that I stared at as thought hypnotized. During one of the first sessions something curious crossed my mind. I thought about how the fish and I lived in two parallel worlds that had almost nothing to do with each other, and yet were of mutual benefit. What the fish received from my world was quite elementary: food and warmth. I, in return, received from theirs something immeasurably more completed: inner tranquility. If I wanted to thank them for this gift, who could I possibly do it? How could I explain the concept of inner tranquility to beings without a soul? I couldn't. Some things can pass through the membrane that divides parallel worlds and some things can't."

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I was reading it, Hidden Camera reminded me of some of my favorite books: The Trial, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Labyrinths. And yet it didn't quite pay off in the way those books did. What is Hidden Camera about, really? I don't know. (Perhaps that's the problem.) As far as I can tell, it's about a man convinced that there's no afterlife (or "beforelife") who subsequently learns that this isn't true. He discovers this over the course of a long, strange evening in which three people (though I use that term loosely, as they appear to be human--but supernaturally so) lead him on a bewildering journey of discovery. What he discovers, specifically, is that one of the women he's been seeing (but not really interacting with) all evening is actually the spirit(?) of a child about to be born that very night. Or something. Frankly, I found this big reveal to be a letdown because it came out of nowhere. Well, not "nowhere": the main character has only one conversation in the book, with an obstetrician, and the topic is life after (and before) death. But other than that, none of the allegorical scenes earlier in the book seemed to have anything to do with life and/or death.

But perhaps the point isn't the point. Like in a David Lynch movie, the journey is sometimes more enjoyable than the destination. And I did enjoy the set pieces Živković constructed.

[Jai Lau · Rating 4 out of 5]

The unnamed narrator of the book is incredibly well-written and fleshed-out. The reader quickly learns that he is risk-averse and extremely mindful of how he is perceived by others. All of his behaviour is governed by expected societal manner and appearances. It is through this characterisation that the events of the book really work. Despite the absurdity of some of the events befalling the character, he is restricted in his possible reactions. This leads to some comic situations (the bookshop, with the narrator being so mindful of how the bookshop assistant thinks of him, that he spends an hour pretending to look for books when he just needed to go into the back room, sums him up nicely). Structurally, the book is comprised of a number of scenarios and although I enjoyed all of them up to the zoo, once the narrative starts becoming overly supernatural rather than simply preposterous, interest was lost. Large parts of the book were great reading but I think it would have been better if it had tried to do a little less.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hidden Camera had a terrific, mysterious momentum from the start, as the protagonist is drawn into one strange circumstance after another, but as it went on those circumstances felt a bit redundant or one-dimensional. I suppose I was waiting for some other layer of the novel to be revealed in a way that never quite happened. Ultimately it reminded me quite a bit of another novel to which I had an identical reaction to, Philippe Claudel's The Investigation — both of them stories in which so much energy went into setting up the absurdity and disorientation, without ever allowing that energy to amount to much. I also wonder if not reading this in one sitting (I came close, but finished the final 50 or so pages the following day) sapped the momentum in a way that wouldn't have happened had I stayed in the novel's grip straight through.

[David Rim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've always been neurotic enough to monitor myself, which made this one pretty enticing to me. An undertaker gets an invitation to a movie starring himself and goes on a strange journey reminiscent of Leopold Bloom's, believing himself to be the star of a hidden camera television show. I feel like there was a lot I missed in the translation, because despite the sometimes fascinating plot lines, there was a strain of allegory that I couldn't quite grab hold of. There's a strange dream-like quality, in the sense that I'm listening to someone else's dream, and there's nothing more boring that that as we all know. The ending almost makes up for it, but in the end I couldn't recommend this to anyone I know. It took me more than a month to get through it.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/599896.html[return][return]I think this may be my favourite Serbian writer's first attempt at a full novel. Our unnamed narrator, an undertaker, finds himself the victim of a compulsion to follow a trail of surreal summonses to a cinema, a second-hand bookshop, the zoo, a mysterious ecclesiastival building reached only by a sewer and so on. The writing is pretty sparse but lyrical with it. I found myself wondering whether we were being set up for an ending where the narrator turns out to have died at the beginning (a la The Third Policeman) or else where he dies at the end (a la The Trial). But in the end I was pretty satisfied with what we got.

[Hesper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure what to make of this odd little story, and I suspect confronting and settling on an explanation of its impenetrability is partially the point.

The plot is straightforward: an aging undertaker takes part in a series of increasingly surreal events he believes to be a ploy for a hidden camera show, and in the process finds the sense of peace that had been missing from his life. The end result, not so straightforward; the author has deliberately avoided an explanation, leaving the conclusion entirely up to the reader.

There is a vague resemblance to Haruki Murakami, particularly his short fiction, though Zoran Živković strikes me as more cerebral. This will benefit from a rereading at some point, though not any time soon.