Barbi Marković on her football book of the year, 'Piksi Book': "I hate football!"

Barbi Marković, did you laugh when your "Piksi Book" was voted Football Book of the Year? I laughed when I was nominated.

You're probably the first award winner who hates football. Yes, at least parts of it.

Which ones are they? It's not about football at all, just as football is often not about football, but about belonging, group identities, and the resulting rejection of others. I think this kind of merging into large groups is dangerous.

Why did you write a football book anyway? I never wanted to, but Frank Willmann is a very persuasive person. He publishes the "Ikonen" series, in which the book was published, and knew that I hate football. Nevertheless, he kept insisting that I write about it. And after I agreed, I realized that I, too, wanted to read a book about football by myself and was curious to see how I approached the subject.

You were born and raised in Belgrade, and your book is set against the backdrop of the breakup of Yugoslavia. In 1990, you were ten years old. Did you already feel back then that the breakup of the country and football had something to do with each other? I think I noticed relatively early on that the bully fan culture that takes over all aspects of society in such violent times is an end point.

"Football was the framework for me to deal with this either/or situation," you said in an interview. Could there be anything good about it? Perhaps, but personally, I'm very untalented for this kind of group identity. Someone would have to explain to me why it's a good thing.

"Piksi" is about Dragan Stojković, a former star player for Red Star Belgrade and current coach of the Serbian national team. What interested you about him? There are very practical reasons why I chose him. Each book in this series is named after a player, and I only knew a few. I could only choose between him and two or three others. I thought "Piksi" sounded kind of cute, and he used to have a hairstyle like the cartoon character Calimero, and I liked that. But then I saw a lot of videos of him celebrating because Red Star Belgrade won something in the 1990s. Piksi is often there with Arkan, who then goes from being the leader of football fans to the leader of a paramilitary unit to a war criminal. That's why I largely pushed Piksi to the periphery of the book.

How similar is the Barbie Marković in the book to the real Barbie Marković? They are very similar, but nothing I'm describing actually happened. The descriptions of the characters are quite realistic, well, maybe a bit exaggerated at times.

Does that also apply to Slobodan Markowicz, your very expansive father, with whom you roam the amateur pitches of Belgrade in the book? Yes, I always found him so fascinating that I wanted to use him in a book. However, I always thought he had to be a detective.

What did he say about how you described him? He doesn't know what it says because he doesn't speak German. But he's relatively vain, so he probably wouldn't like it that much. Or he might really like the fact that he's now a literary figure.

At one point in the book it says: "Barbi Marković 1989, gender female, but pronouns he him him." Was your father disappointed that you weren't a boy who could have become a footballer? My father was always very gentle, a nice man and not the typical patriarch. But my parents addressed me with the male pronoun for many years. It's not uncommon in Serbia to call your daughter "my son", but with me it went even further. I always had short hair and when we became Pioneers, all the girls wore dresses, only I wore a suit. That was kind of cool, a 1980s gender insecurity, but maybe deep down it was a patriarchal thing.

Wasn't becoming a soccer player an option in 1990? No, it was never an option. I did sometimes have to play in goal when games were played in front of our house, but that was mostly unwelcome, and I was never able to play soccer.

Your book ends with the sentence "I hate football." Is there anything you can still reconcile with football? It's not just football; I don't like watching sports in general. I love table tennis, but I would never watch table tennis on TV. And football isn't just loaded with nationalism, it's often boring. Throughout my childhood, I watched games where absolutely nothing happened. The smaller the teams, the less interesting it was. Today, I can sometimes get caught up in the Hollywood situation on TV when a small team wins unexpectedly. Then I want to support the underdog, but that's about it.

Do you find it strange to think that you'll probably be the only person in the room at the awards ceremony on October 24 in Nuremberg who completely rejects football? No, I don't feel completely out of place because I could at least appreciate the language used in football reportage. These colleagues on radio or television who have to spend hours covering an empty field with a few people running back and forth sometimes do it really creatively. There was a Croatian presenter whose words always rhymed. My favorite was Jordan Ivanovic, whom I often heard on the radio as a child. He had strange metaphors. Like: Just as a volcanic eruption is the greatest thing in nature, the volley is the highest form of football.

They were so impressed by the people at the microphone that there's a passage in the book where an imaginary reporter provides live commentary as they work on their book. Wouldn't it be funny if our entire lives were commented on like that? Especially since these reporters would even make something out of truly boring situations.