Dragan Velikic - A nyomolvasó

The scanner is a great exploration of memory. The story, which begins during the First World War, follows the life of a woman, a mother, from her childhood to her death. The narrator of the novel, who is in his sixties, is the author's alter ego, who is in Budapest when he receives the news of his mother's death, and this triggers an avalanche of long-ago events in him. The evocation of the recent and distant past includes ancestors, people surrounding the protagonists, cities, countries and eras that have disappeared unnoticed, including the disintegrated Yugoslavia with the migrants of the twentieth century. However, the personal life story only serves as a framework for the reader, identifying with the author, to unravel a special piece of the fabric of an entire century. There would be nothing extraordinary in this, if the secret of Dragan Velikić's writing art did not lie in the way he is able to evoke a long-gone world.