Zo-om

Prose in Albanian

„Naimi”, Tirana 2023 / „Librarium Haemus”, Bucharest 2024

Zo-om is a literary exploration along a metaphorical, fractured border-line, weaving together punctuation-like symbols and an anxiety-laden emptiness. It probes the fluid, silence-charged boundary between animal and human. The human side crosses this boundary often via deliberate – or sometimes unavoidable – silence. The animal side communicates through "speech without words". The narrative unfolds in seven interconnected parts, titled: Short Eastory (An author-crafted word), Cage, Clean, Borrowed voices, The heritage, l.o.l., More hidden than Literature. These parts collectively span not only Albanian, Balkan and European contexts but also broader universal sensibilities and mentalities. The author constructs the concept of “Zo-om” – layered term evoking: Zoo(logy), Zo-om* (with ”om” meaning “human” in Romanian), Zoom (as in “magnification” in English). It's a creative weaving of linguistic and semiotic meanings, characteristic of Kyçyku’s stylistic innovation. ”Zo-om” stands out as a philosophical and poetic narrative, rich in semiotic layers and linguistic play, emblematic of Kyçyku’s broader oeuvre – marked by cultural reflection, bilingual expression, and experimental form.

Books & synopsis - Catalogue

Content 

The Deathers, novel, Pogradec 1988 / Bucharest 2020 [Mortët, roman, SQ]     

A Glorious and Dying Tribe – The Saga of an Oblivion, Bucharest 1998 / 2024 [Un trib glorios și muribund – eposul unei uitări, RO]      

The Rivers of the Sahara, novel, Tirana 1986 / Bucharest 1994 [Lumenjtë e Saharasë, roman, SQ]       

Home, novel [Bucharest, 2005, SQ]         

Incógnito, novel, Bucharest 2015 [Incógnito, roman, SQ]        

The Prompter’s Exodus – streodrama, Bucharest 2022 [Exodul sufleurilor – sterodramă, RO]   

You and other stories, Prose (1997-2020)      

Eye/s / Ojo, novel, ES – Bucharest 2003 [Sy, roman, SQ]         

Father / El padre, ES – Bucharest 2003 [Ati, roman, SQ]        

The year in which the swan was invented, novel, Bucharest 1996 [Anul în care s-a inventat lebăda, RO]           

Ex – novel with love & conspiracy, novel, Bucharest 2008 [Ex – roman de dragoste & conspiraţie, RO]

Empatycon or The Book of Premature Life, novel, Bucharest 2007 [Empatycon sau Cartea Vieții Premature, RO]

Zo-om, prose in Albanian, „Naimi”, Tirana 2023 / „Librarium Haemus”, Bucharest 2024

*

Ardian Kyçyku – Pen names: Ardian-Christian Kyçyku / Kuciuk, writer of Albanian and Romanian born on the 23rd of August 1969, Pogradec, Albania, author of many original books (novels, short prose, plays, scenarios, scientific studies, essays, anthologies, translations) and short films (called 'semiotic' by the author). Doctor in Comparative and Universal Literature. University Professor (Semiotics and Communication / The Research Methodology). Certificate of Qualification (Habil.) in the field of doctoral studies in Theatre and Performing Arts. Between 2008 and 2020 he was dean and rector in Bucharest. Since 1998 he is co-founder and co-director of European Review “Haemus”. 

webside: www.ardiankycyku.info 

Curriculum Vitae in extenso 

References 

inTranslation 

Contact [Publishers only] 

 

Boundaries between the Theater of Existence and the Existence of Theater – a semiotics of Ingmar Bergman's vision as a theater man

Summary 

Boundaries between the Theater of Existence and the Existence of Theater – a semiotics of Ingmar Bergman's vision as a theater man explores the relationship between the dramatic text and the texture of society (in a broader sense, including metaphorically, simultaneously representing the perception of existence, mentality, sensibility, spirituality, the need and the capacities to assimilate the theatrical message, as well as the evolution of aesthetic and artistic tastes). In a situation of anthropological and global oxymoron, in which the precision provided by high technology collaborates with the chaos produced and maintained by the already inhuman quantity of information, the role and purpose of the text directly concern the present and the future of the human species. 

In order to more easily distinguish and unbiasedly follow the movements of the texture of society, I have chosen as an example the vision (aka method) of an artist, Ingmar Bergman, whose experiences, creations in theater and film, written or verbal testimonies mirror and convincingly convey the position that the Artist must adopt as, in the war between the Vertical Text - the texture of society (generically referred to as the Horizontal Text), the former not only to survive, not to be deformed or diluted, but also not to lose its primordial supremacy. In this context, due to the exigencies imposed by a certain (assumed) disproportion between the guiding idea of the work and the data selected to illustrate certain phenomena – some public, others accessible only through semiotic deductions or metaphor – one may conclude that the creative and existential method of an artist can be the message, the lesson for artists and not only from other generations. 

Tematică studii doctorale / Topics of doctoral studies 2025

Perioade de înscriere a candidaților: 7-8 iulie și 8-9 septembrie 2025 / Registration periods: July 7-8 and September 8-9, 2025

[RO] 

1. Dramaturgie balcanică de-a lungul secolului XX. Ideatică, tematică, stiluri. Elemente specifice și comune cu dramaturgia vestică

2. Semiotica textului dramatic – între informare, formare, formatare. Relația teatrului cu ideologia. Cenzura de stat și cenzura sistemului de semne al Teatrului. Studii de caz: teatrul interbelic, teatrul realismului socialist, teatru contemporan în Balcani

3. Stare de teatru: Text Vertical versus Text Orizontal în relație cu structura societății. Studii de caz: teatrul sub dictaturi și vice versa; libertate, estetică și moralitate în textul dramatic; propagandă și reclamă în și prin ”teatrul actual”

4. Mimesis și ritual în viziunea populară asupra spectacolului. Măști ale cotidianului, catarsis și educație în agora. Timp, spațiu, personaje, elemente de limbaj teatral. Studii comparative cu Commedia dell'arte

5. Materie dramatică și „convertiri” ale acestei materii în Teatru. Studii comparative: teatrul în spații culturale și lingvistice diferite (de exemplu: Balcania Magna – Scandinavia; mentalități și teatru în limbile slave, albaneză, română, maghiară, idiș, italiană, franceză, germană)

6. Percepția (asupra) și receptarea actului teatral sau Lumea în două ipostaze: înainte și după (auto)orbirea regelui Oedip. Viața ca antract

7. Teatru în teatru; teatru în film. Limbaj teatral versus limbaj cinematografic

8. Branding în teatru. Textul dramatic – între oferta impusă de  public și misiunea de a îmbogăți multilateral spectatorul

9. Decăderea tragediei ca structură esențială și riscul de tabloidizare a teatrului

10. Faustiana – idealism și pragmatism în teatru. Individul, mulțimile și oferta Cetății.

11. Orice altă temă, cu acord prealabil. 

[EN] 

1. Balkan dramaturgy throughout the 20th century. Ideology, themes, styles. Specific and common elements with Western dramaturgy

2. Semiotics of the dramatic text – between information, formation, formatting. The relationship of theatre with ideology. State censorship and censorship of the theatre’s sign system. Case studies: interwar theatre, socialist realism theatre, contemporary theatre in the Balkans

3. State of theatre: Vertical Text versus Horizontal Text in relation to the structure of society. Case studies: theatre under dictatorships and vice versa; freedom, aesthetics and morality in the dramatic text; propaganda and advertising in and through "current theatre"

4. Mimesis and ritual in the popular vision of the spectacle. Masks of everyday life, catharsis and education in the agora. Time, space, characters, elements of theatrical language. Comparative studies with Commedia dell'arte

5. Dramatic matter and "conversions" of this matter in the Theatre. Comparative studies: theatre in different cultural and linguistic spaces (for example: Balkania Magna – Scandinavia; mentalities and theatre in Slavic languages, Albanian, Romanian, Hungarian, Yiddish, Italian, French, German)

6. Perception (on) and reception of the theatrical act or The World in Two Hypostases: Before and After the (Self)Blinding of King Oedipus. Life as an Intermission

7. Theatre in theatre; theatre in film. Theatrical language versus cinematographic language

8. Branding in theatre. The dramatic text – between the offer imposed by the public and the mission to enrich the spectator in many ways

9. The decline of tragedy as an essential structure and the risk of tabloidization of theatre

10. Faustiana – idealism and pragmatism in theatre. The individual, the crowds and the offer of the "Citadel".

11. Any other theme, with prior agreement. 

* Info, Documente și tematici ale colegilor îndrumători de doctorat

Contact

Academica

Ex - roman de dragoste & conspirație

 

Ex - Roman de dragoste & conspiraţie 

Povestea uluitoare a unui gropar balcanic, un individ ce are parte de un miracol mai puţin reperat de literatură sau de presă. Viaţa lui se schimbă după un vis obişnuit, a unui craniu şi a prieteniei oferite de doi tineri care se luptă, fiecare în felul său, cu ciudăţeniile tranziţiei. Inedit nu doar prin limbaj şi umor, ci şi printr-o viziune blândă asupra chinurilor cotidiene şi asupra acelui străvechi „război” – vizibil, crunt sau subteran – dus dintre generaţii, acest roman de dragoste & conspiraţie dezvăluie câteva adevăruri şocante despre schimburi stranii realizate între generaţii de oameni care, din punct de vedere a mentalităţii şi al simţirii, se exclud reciproc. Schimburile de acest gen ascund, în esenţă, un joc, sau, mai bine zis: JOCUL, pe care Omul l-a neglijat, până nu mai ştie să joace decât cu propria-i soartă, dar şi singura şansă a speciei de a supravieţui. 

Ex – novel with love & conspiracy 

The astonishing story of a Balkan gravedigger, a man who experiences a miracle rarely captured in literature or the media. His life changes after an ordinary dream, a skull, and a friendship offered by two young people, each struggling in their own way with the unpredictability of existence. Unconventional not only in language and humor, but also through its gentle perspective on everyday suffering and on that ancient ‘war’ – visible, harsh, or underground – waged between generations and beyond, this novel of love & conspiracy reveals certain realities hidden beneath the strange, tacit agreements made between generations of people who, in terms of mentality and emotion, mutually exclude one another. These kinds of exchanges ultimately conceal a game – or rather, the GAME – that humanity has neglected to the point where it no longer knows how to play (with itself) except with its own fate; and yet, this may be the species’ only chance at survival.

www.ardiankycyku.info

The Rivers of the Sahara - a novel

 

[Original title: Lumenjtë e Saharasë]

Translated from Albanian by Ukë Zenel Buçpapaj

Digital edition

Like under the sky

 

In the game / in life:

the Witness - the pseudonym of a boy

from the age of 13 until shortly after death

 

Their voices were heard as if they were underwater. We imagined them locked up in bubbles made somehow out of soap, or like those that represent dreams in drawings, and I smiled.

Our smiles disappeared just like bubbles as well, but they were hard to be noticed by someone. For years, not one of them had the curiosity, nor did they try or struggle to translate our smiles. They believed them to be as last bubbles, from the category of those who leave the dying before they even gave up the ghost, or with the exit of their souls, as if the soul was just air enclosed in bubbles and couldn’t mix with water.

When the twilight melted into the night, and by courtesy of the deep blue just like stings, the stars gathered above us, we had the impression that all the bubbles of the day had been just some kind of translucent eggs. They rose to the thin layer where the waters met with the skies, with the closeness of the stars to the waters, and burst gently, as if in a deafness. The stars were turning into snowflakes or crystal flowers.

Everything resembled somehow the fertilization, but not so much that of the flowers, but more of the fish that danced around us.

I learned the word ‘birth,

 

THE DAY OF FAREWELL  

13. I encountered deeply ingrained issues. I had been talking to myself for who knows how long, and with each uttered word, I learned new ones. I learned the word ‘birth,’ the word ‘issue,’ the phrase ‘deeply ingrained,’ the word ‘speak,’ the word ‘perhaps,’ the phrase ‘for how long,’ the phrase ‘to oneself,’ the conjunction ‘and,’ the word ‘conjunction,’ the word ‘after,’ the word ‘every,’ the word ‘word,’ the word ‘thus,’ the word ‘learn,’ the word ‘news,’ the word ‘phrase,’ the word ‘enough,’ and many more and many more. Otherwise, how could I even speak, even if just to myself? In truth, the words were the same, but to me, they felt different, entirely different, and I relearned them from scratch, as if they were completely new. However, I managed to open my eyes—somehow, who knows how—and beheld five white walls. Excluding the floor, which was behind me since I was lying down, there were five white walls in the room. It was fortunate there weren’t more than five, because even if there were, they would still be just walls. 

The Fishhook

They were kind enough, or had enough time on their hands, to carry out the funeral and pay for the undertaker, the parish priest, the carpenters, the sextons, and the hearse that carried his body from the hostel to the cemetery. They were in a sense his brothers and sisters, if of different mothers and religions. Their were only really distinguished by their names, or at least their nicknames, which they had brought from their home countries or acquired through some unusual exploit here. They had known him only as “the guy the bitches don’t bark at,” because he was the only person who, in the yard in front of the dormitory, at the windows, in the dining hall, or on the street that led to the town. was left in peace by the hungry, continually pregnant bitches who guarded their litters hereabouts. Perhaps he knew the language of dogs.

Triumphalus or The Sunset of the Stallions

The Old Geezer had come again to the shore of the Black Sea to buy himself an eye. The other reason was to spend a honeymoon here. As a rule, he would go back with an extra honeymoon and the same number of eyes. Five years before, appalled as he was by the fact that the number of those who could see with their right eye started to halve, he had decided to seek the advice of a famous Asian astrologer. He had the right to see how the world and its beings look like before he should pass away. The astrologer read his stars, translated his runes, went into a trance, questioned some souls, read his Tarot cards and told his clearly: You should buy it from the same place where it burnt out. The Old Geezer’s eye had unexpectedly burnt out in his homeland, while he was asleep and he was overtaken by the insensitivity of faith. He hadn’t lost any eye in the Great War, when both your eyes were more endangered than your head. He was embarrassed about buying a left eye in his own country, perhaps because of the way in which his country fellows would see the world. Now, that the countries were about to join, he could choose to buy his eye in much larger space.

You and other stories

Selected short stories

You and other stories

You and other stories

"There are people that have survived feeding themselves with paper. There are even writers that eat paper. The forerunner of these is that anonymous monk who used to write with his right hand and to eat with his left hand. There is told that one revealing morning, he realized he had eaten everything he had written. What had really happened inside his body? What might mean the act of writing, the writer, immortality, and the potential readers for him?" [The Author, Uneaten Papers]

"Ardian-Christian Kyçyku is a writer of Albanian descent, who settled in Romania in 1990. He wrote 20 novels in Albanian, and, during the last 10 years, he published a few novels and stories in a perfectly assimilated Romanian language. In Albania, he is vaguely known; here, in Romania, not even that. But his books are a revelation. I will mention here his recently published novel A Dying, Glorious Tribe (1998). In culturally normal conditions, Kyçyku would be seen as an Eastern-European Marquez. But he is just considered an "artistic brain," transferred from Albania to Romania. And he has the weird status "between a professional cultural renegade and an old cosmopolitan," as he defines himself. I consider him a Romanian writer, in a space that used to be called Thracia a long time ago, from the Carpathians to his Illyria. Kyçyku is the wonder child of a Romania remembering she was once Thracia… and who is today stressed out because she cannot find any collapsing or perhaps redemption allies" [Plural Magazine, Romania's Thracian Memory, Bucharest, Vasile Andru]