Izvještaj sa događaja: Stevo Grabovac, "Poslije zabave"

WRITTEN BY: Branka Todorović

On Saturday, July 6, at the Bookstan festival, one of the most important contemporary writers in the region – Stevo Grabovac – presented himself to the audience. Grabovac is the winner of the seventieth NIN award, for the novel ‘Poslije zabave’. He spoke to the audience about his literary work, the creation of the novel ‘Poslije zabave’ and its reception. The author was in conversation with Marija Pejić. The novel is written in the first person, from the perspective of the writer himself. The author emphasized that he intentionally approached the novel in an immediate and personal way. The main theme of the novel is the crime committed against children, for the sake of organ trafficking. Grabovac, however, distances himself when he talks about the crime itself, introducing another narrator. For this reason, the author emphasizes that this is a novel about the impossibility of writing about the tragic and morbid, but at the same time about the necessity of that writing. Grabovac mentioned the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño as the writer most significant for his work, whose quote opens the novel ‘Poslije zabave’. Talking about his entire work, Stevo Grabovac speaks modestly and shyly about his talent and storytelling skills. Nevertheless, awards such as NIN's and the Vladan Desnica award confirm the value of his creativity. Grabovac likes to attribute to himself the epithet of the writer of the 'skipped generation', thus ranking among those writers who were most marked by the war of the 1990s, inscribing both hope and hopelessness in their work. With such an interpretation of the role of the writer and literature, Grabovac brought this year's Bookstan to a proper end, which will be closed with a guest appearance by Darko Cvijetić and a concert by Damir Imamović.

Photo (c) Milomir Kovačević Strašni