DRAGAN VELIKIĆ, RECIPIENT
OF THE “PROZART” AWARD 2026

The “Prozart” Award, presented for the fourteenth time by the International Literary Festival “PRO-ZA Balkan” to an outstanding author for their contribution to the development of literature in the Balkans, has been awarded in 2026 to Dragan Velikić, one of the most important, widely translated, and internationally recognised contemporary Serbian writers.

Dragan Velikić has created an impressive body of prose works — twelve novels, three collections of short stories, and several books of essays, interviews, and works in other genres. Born in 1953, he was already recognized as one of the most promising and distinctive voices of the emerging new postmodern wave in Serbian prose with his first published novel, “Via Pula”. His subsequent novels, “Astrakhan” and “Dante’s Square”, established him as one of the leading figures on the Yugoslav literary scene of the time.

His later novels only further enhanced and consolidated his undisputed role in the development of Serbian prose, a distinction also confirmed by his two-time receipt of Serbia’s most prestigious literary award for prose, the “NIN Award”, for the novels “The Russian Window” (2007) and “The Investigator” (2015) — the latter being one of the best-selling works of prose in Serbia overall. He is also the recipient of a number of major regional and European awards, including the “Vilenica” Prize, the Budapest City Literature Prize, and several other distinguished honors.

Throughout Velikić’s diverse body of writing, certain qualities remain constant: his stylistic refinement, cultivated since his student days as a scholar of comparative literature at the University of Belgrade; his affinity for the intimate inner states of his protagonists, which also contain autobiographical elements; and his keen interest in the ongoing political, social, and cultural transformations in the region.

Numerous critical assessments of his work have emphasized his distinctive individual position within the context of contemporary Serbian literature. With his accomplished and finely chiselled prose style, Dragan Velikić quite naturally joins the ranks of the great Balkan authors who have received the “Prozart” Award.

The “Prozart” Award Jury:
• Prof. Dr. Ermis Lafazanovski, Chair
• Prof. Dr. Aleksandar Prokopiev, Member
• Dejan Trajkoski, Member