The novel Islednik (Coroner) has brought writer Dragan Velikić his second NIN Award, a feat previously achieved only by Dobrica Ćosić and Oskar Davičo
With his first novel, Via Pula, he entered the NIN finals. He repeated that achievement five or six times, and then, in 2008, he received the NIN Award for best novel in 2007 for his work The Russian Window. Speaking at the time about the importance of awards, he said that a person in our country reads, on average, two books a year, one of which is the NIN Award winner. What more can a writer wish for?
Well, it turned out that he wished for another NIN Award, and he got it. His novel Islednik (Coroner), with three votes from a total of five, as many as there were members on the jury, was voted the best novel in 2015. And thus, following Dobrica Ćosić, Velikić has become only the second writer in the 62-year history of this award to win NIN laureate twice. They are only bettered by Oskar Davičo, who won the award three times.
According to critics, Islednik is the best work to date of the Belgrade- born, Pula-raised Velikić (63). This is a work of confessional prose from the perspective of a man who is in Budapest and who receive news there that his mother has died. This provides the occasion for the opening of an emotional black box and everything that follows is a masterful confession about a time and a country that no longer exist. He speaks boldly about that we would prefer to remain silent about.
Speaking about his own book, Velikić says:
“Islednik is no more or less confessional than any of my other novels. Mother or someone called my mother, has appeared in several previous novels and has some characteristics of my actual mother and some that are not. Of course, everything a writer writes about he has experienced. Even imagined is experienced. I don’t know where this need to detect the veracity of novels comes from. The value of a literary work in its persuasiveness to offer us the illusion that what we’re reading happened just as it is written. Thus, readers will only follow me if they find a part of their own world in Islednik, not in terms of the mere copying of scenes and events, but rather recognising situations in which the development of their everyday life unwound and they gained life experience.”
Readers will only follow me if they find a part of their own world in Islednik, not in terms of the mere copying of scenes and events, but rather recognising situations in which the development of their everyday life unwound and they gained life experience
Velikić generally writes about the cities in which he has lived since he recognizes in them what James Joyce called – street furniture. He has been translated into 15 languages and has more than 50 foreign editions of his novels. Speaking about Pula, the town of his upbringing, he says:
“Whenever I come to Pula, my body marks an adrenaline rush. Of course, the city has changed, but I can walk through all those layers that I remember from when I was a kid, student, young man… The Pula I created in my books is also inscribed there. My Pula is actually the big film studio, Ćinećita, where I set most of my novels. If I lived in that city today, I certainly wouldn’t use it in the way I use it in my literature.”
When talking about the country in which he spent his formative years, and whose president was Josip Broz Tito, Velikić is very precise:
“That country of which Tito was the president was not democratic, nor did I participate in anything there that would now mean I yearn for it. On the contrary, when I merely remember my journal from the army, which I still have and which was the reason for imprisonment during that time. However, that state set aside substantial funds for culture, because it was known that we had to present ourselves to the world in a good light, precisely through culture.
“And, what is most important, we knew the difference between culture and entertainment. A long time ago I said that Tito had Krlež as a confidante, and you can recall who the confidantes of his successors were, it wasn’t long ago.
I really do not know who those intellectual giants are who are confidantes to the people in power today are. Do you know?” Velikić’s biography notes that he was also editor of publishing activities at Radio B92, a columnist for numerous newspapers and, from 2005, an ambassador of Serbia & Montenegro, and then Serbia, in Austria.
He has authored the novels Via Pula, Astrakhan, Hamsin, North Wall, Dante’s Square, The Case of Bremen, Dossier Domaševski, The Russian Window, Bonavia and Islednik. He is also the author of several books of short stories and essays. He graduated in world literature.