Member Zorankociper68(he/him)

My library contains my own published works in English and Croatian — existential novels that confront truth, memory, and the moral weight of history.

Among them are "The Theatre of Truth and Lies" and "Two Cemeteries, Two Graves", both available on Amazon and cataloged in the National and University Library of Croatia.

These books are not entertainment; they are testimony — fragments of conscience shaped by war, exile, and the search for meaning.

I wasn’t born a writer.

I became one after losing almost everything.

Before I ever wrote a line, I was a cook, a soldier, an officer, a drunk, a wanderer, a swineherd, a seller of used furniture, and for a time, a homeless man.

I know the bottom of society because I lived there.

I know loss because I buried my family, my dignity, and my hope.

Eight years ago I came to the United States with nothing.

What happened after that was not luck but a kind of resurrection — a slow rising from shame and despair, built on faith and stubbornness.

Here in Illinois, I finally began doing what I should have done all my life: write.

I write out of love — for the family I lost, for my people, for my homeland, and for anyone who still believes that truth matters.

But I write in my own way: without illusions, without decoration, without fear of what hurts.

My books come from the places where history breaks people — from war, hunger, silence, exile, and the fragile dignity of ordinary lives.

I write about those who carry the weight of history on their backs while others take the credit.

I write for the forgotten, the small, the invisible — because they are the ones who tell the real story.

I am a writer now.

Not because I chose it, but because everything else in my life led me here.