By Dragan Velikić
Translated from the Serbian by Christina Zorić
30 Sept. 2025
IBSN: 978-1-912545-544
Winner of the 2015 Nin Award, the most prestigious literary prize in Serbia
The news of his mother’s death finds the writer in Budapest and prompts the opening of an old black box of family mementos. Inevitably, this leads to an unravelling of multi-layered stories and an investigation into everyday lives and times that no longer exists. The Investigator contains everything that has made the author so successful in his homeland: a perfect sense for detail, linguistic precision, a brilliantly polished style. While the novel starts as the search for a lost mother, it soon becomes a story about a country and a people who have passed; an elegy for Yugoslavia as well as a family.
Reviews from the French edition:
“…a breath-taking, often painful, immersion in the history of the Balkans in the 20th century, notably that of Istria where the writer grew up.” (Mireille Descombes, Le Temps Weekend)
“This poetic novel combines intimate reflections, historical reality and collective memory, drawing a moving, political, social and geographic landscape. With a perfect feeling for detail, Dragan Velikić orchestrates a meaningful polyphony marked by a brilliant style.”
(Le Courrier des Balkans)
