Barbi Markovic

If you’re in a football stadium and you notice the shouting getting louder and louder, listen carefully to what is being shouted. Make sure you’re the first to reach the exit. First out of the stadium, then out of the country—before the rush begins. The world cannot be saved.

Barbi Marković (Serbia) will be in conversation about her book The Last Team.

In The Last Team, Barbi Marković weaves together, in a virtuoso play with the language of sports commentators, memories of football, her absent father, and a mythical Yugoslavia that—despite the impending catastrophe—still believes football can make a difference. The Last Team won the award for Best Football Book of the Year in Germany, making Marković the first female author to receive the prize.

The protagonist, Barbi, grows up in the late 1980s in what was then Yugoslavia. Her father regularly takes her to the football stadium, a world where competition prevails over solidarity and the young football talent Piksi is worshipped like a saint. Her father, once a football legend himself, hopes his daughter will follow in his footsteps, but Barbi is more interested in writing. When Yugoslavia loses to Argentina on penalties during the 1990 World Cup, on the eve of the Yugoslav Wars, the entire country falls into deep mourning: even their last shared passion seems to have been lost.

Barbi Marković (1980) was born in Serbia. She studied German literature in Belgrade and Vienna, where she still lives. Since her debut Ausgehen in 2009, she has won several literary awards, including for her novel Minihorror, published in 2025.