Literary evening with Dragan Velikić, one of the most important contemporary writers of the region, was held last night at the Modern Gallery in Podgorica, as part of the celebration of International Book Day. The event was organized by the Secretariat for Culture of the Capital City in cooperation with the NGO "Kultura Plus", as part of the national event "Book Night".
During the evening, Velikić presented his latest novel, "Vienna Novel", which has already attracted great attention from the reading public and critics. The author spoke with Jelena Krsmanović, editor of the publishing house Nova knjiga.
"A Viennese Novel" deals with family drama and introspective questioning. The novel follows the story of a young psychiatrist, Pavle Marić, who is arrested on charges of poisoning a colleague in a Viennese hospital, and his father, Andrej, who is confronted with his own mistakes and omissions.
Velikić said that it is an autofiction, about events from 2020, during the Covid era, that affected his family. He emphasized that this is his most personal novel to date, which talks about parenthood, and the relationship between father and son, above all.
"'The Vienna Novel' is mostly personal, but literature must arise from questioning and emotion. I wasn't sure I would publish this novel when I finished it. I wasn't even sure I would be able to incorporate a real event, so personal, into a novel, and have it work for a reader who doesn't know, nor does he need to know, the background to the book," he said.
"The novel boils down to the accusation that the main character of my novel - my son - poisoned his colleagues with medication during the corona pandemic. And that is completely insane - why would someone, who is a doctor, use medication to poison someone? There was no element of indictment, and at the end of the trial my hero is acquitted, but then the judge concludes that the decision to detain and file an indictment was too harsh. The state prosecutor, who filed the indictment, also agrees. People who practice law probably think I am crazy, but it really happened and lasted less than two years," Velikić said.
He says that the fact that the story is true was the hardest thing for him.
"It wasn't my idea to write a report, why would anyone care? It was just supposed to be a template for a relevant literary work. I dealt with the procedure and all those documents, I think I could take the bar exam, but precisely so as not to burden the manuscript, and not deprive the readers who are lawyers of the pleasure," he said.
People from real life became characters and moved into fiction, acquiring characteristics that even the writer did not want to give them, emphasizes Velikić.
"It is impossible to write a biography, there is always fiction. But it is also impossible to write a literary work that is pure fiction, there is always the autobiographical imprint of the author. It is precisely this imprint that provides an energetic, adrenaline-filled potential," he emphasizes.
Trying to illustrate the difficult separation of life and fiction, Velikić said that his son At, as an actor in the unpleasant events on which the novel and the main character are based, was his reader during the creation of the "Vienna Novel" and told him that he was a profiteer.
"You based 'Investigator' on your mother's experience and profited, now you're profiting again - on your son," Velikić said.
He points out that for him, the cathartic moment of writing this book was confronting himself, the opportunity to write his own view of events, but not to spare himself either.
The writer emphasized that as the characters of the father and mother, Olga and Andrej, he used the characters from his novel "The Northern Wall", published in 1995, which tells of the Balkan doom at the end of the 20th century and the refugee mentality of the former Yugoslavs. Olga and Andrej then arrive in Austria, and a quarter of a century later they deal with the nightmare their son has fallen into.
The literary evening with Dragan Velikić was an opportunity for the audience to hear first-hand the story of a work that is already considered a significant contribution to contemporary literature and one of the best books by the two-time winner of the Nin Award, who on this occasion read several excerpts from his new novel.
This event was the central part of the "Book Night 2025" program, which is being celebrated for the 12th time at the national level.
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