Dragan
Velikić

Dragan Velikić was born in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1953. After studying comparative literature, he worked for the independent, regime-critical weekly magazine Vreme in Belgrade from 1991 to 1996.

Velikić – a Central European author in the best possible way, with a sense of responsibility to the multicultural heritage of this area – has published two volumes of stories, six novels and three volumes of essays to date. In addition, he writes regular columns in various European magazines. “Velikić is an author who requires his own characters, first and foremost, so that he can depict the places where they love, suffer or die”, according to the Neue Züricher Zeitung. “This can easily be seen in the novels ‘Das Astragan-Fell’ (1990) and ‘Der Zeichner des Meridian’ (1994). In ‘Dante-Platz’, this topographical orientation has even taken over the title. The author treats these places like palimpsests, whose secret message must be decoded through a repeated reading of overlapping layers of time … cities have their physiognomies and the poets that help shape them. What would Dublin be without Joyce, Trieste without Svevo? Now the Istrian port of Pula has found its lyric voice”.

In spring 2000, Dragan Velikić received the Arnold Zweig Fellowship from the network “Stätte der Zuflucht”, which is presented to authors writing under difficult conditions, who are prevented from working in their home countries.