On Monday ,July 22nd, starting at 9PM, this year festival’s literary programme is to be continued at “Poets’ Square” with the guest for this particular evening being Vladan Matijević. He will present to the audience his latest novel Pakrac.
Vladan Matijević was born in Čačak in 1962, where he still lives today. His are the following works: Don’t Disturb the Chaos (poetry selection,1991), Out of Control (novel, 1995 and the new edition in 2021), R.C.Unavoidably (novel, 1997 with the new edition in 2017), Self-Reduction (poetry selection, 1999), Pretty Dead (short stories, 2000 for which he received the “Ivo Andrić” award), Writer from Afar (novel, 2003 that brought him the “Ninova nagrada” award), Moments of Joy (novel, 2006), Very Little Light (novel, 2010, three awards overall: the “Meša Selimović”, “Borislav Stanković” and “Isidora Sekulić” awards), Memoirs, Amnesias: Essays, Words, Notes (essays, 2012, the “Kočićevo pero” and “Kočićeva knjiga” awards), Ports (short stories, the “Stevan Sremac” and “Danko Popović” awards), Meeting Under Unusual Circumstances (novel, 2016), Freedom of Speech (novel, 2020) and Pakrac (novel, 2023 the recipient of the “Beogradski pobednik” award).
In 2019, he was given the award “Ramonda Serbika” for his overall literary canon and the significant contribution to literature and culture. Furthermore, he has received “Zlatni krst kneza Lazara” also for his unique and significant literary canon. The play Freedom of Speech, written on the basis of Matijević’s novel of the same name, had its premiere at the Čačak City Theatre in 2023. His works have been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Macedonian.
In his interview for “Dnevnik”, Matijević stated the following about his latest novel Pakrac: “The underlying theme of the novel is the omnipresent violence in society. Crime news have become the most important ones in every media. People read, watch and listen to them all the while having no sympathy for the victims or feeling the urge to ask themselves why all this is happening. People get used to crime news, and this habit is becoming more and more detrimental. It desensitizes the mind and makes robots out of people. Looking at the violence and not doing anything about it is almost as bad as the violence itself. My novel’s protagonist suffered violence from an early age. However, as soon as he got a chance, he became violent himself and lost the feeling for that fine line dividing good from evil. My novel is a fiction that has a lot in common with the contemporary society”.
The moderator for the evening is Vesna Trijić, a literary critic, literary historian and bibliographer. Also, she is a panel member of the “Beogradski pobednik” award.
The “Theatre City” Press-Office