Marojevic Wins First Brskovski Gros for Novel on Sister

The prize was handed over by a man who received his own honor that same evening, not as a writer but as a rock musician. Dado Topic, at the closing of the sixth international literary festival “Slova slovenska” in Mojkovac, presented the plaque and envelope to Igor Marojevic, then went back to promoting his own book of poems, “Za koji zivot treba da se rodim” (For What Life One Should Be Born), a collection of sixty poems for sixty years of his career. Crossovers like that seem to be part of how this festival works.

The award is called the Brskovski Gros, and this year it was handed out for the first time since it was established. It honors the best work published between two editions of the festival, and it consists of a plaque and a cash prize of 1,000 euros, decided by a three member jury. The jury was chaired by writer Mirko Rakocevic, the festival’s artistic director, with members Dr. Olga Vojicic Komatina and Dr. Radoje Femic. According to the festival, they chose among a large number of Serbian novels and poetry collections, and the decision was unanimous.

Marojevic has been collecting awards for two decades now, so this one joins a fairly long list: the Golden Sunflower, also known as the Vital Award, followed by the Mesa Selimovic award, the Despot Stefan Lazarevic award, the Tronoski Rodoslov award, the Solaris Novel of the Year, and the Golden Beocug. It also fits into a more recent, faster pace of work: “Majko, pusti me da idem” (Mother, Let Me Go) is his second novel in under a year, since “Etno” (Ethno), his first book after a five year pause and after the acclaimed “Ostaci sveta” (Remains of the World), came out last October.

Where the material for the prize winning novel comes from

The novel opens at the very start of the twenty first century, narrated by a Serbian language and literature teacher trying to piece together the broken fragments of her daughter Itana’s story. In the late 1980s, Itana enters a relationship with a partner involved in crime, later tries to leave him, and he tries to kill her because of it. She survives, but spends the next eleven years in a wheelchair because of her injuries. The book is published by “Stampar Makarije” in Belgrade and “Obodsko slovo” in Podgorica.

The source material is a family one. Marojevic explained in Mojkovac that the story is his own sister’s, that he first wrote down its basic outline back in 2004, shortly after that drama played out, and that he did not return to the manuscript until after his mother’s death in 2024. The twenty year gap is not literary posturing around the subject. Judging by how the novel is built, it was a condition for writing it at all: only once his mother had died could her voice become the narrating voice telling the story of her daughter. The novel ends up being less a chronicle of violence and more an attempt to reconstruct what remained, in the memory of the person who did not save her, of the young woman herself.

Why it mattered to the writer that the book also appeared in Montenegro

Because most of the story takes place there, and because the promotional tour went from Podgorica to Niksic to Mojkovac, with Budva still to come. After receiving the award, Marojevic spoke about what it means to be first in a line that does not yet exist.

“It’s one thing when a writer receives an award from an established program, building on a line of previous laureates, and it’s an entirely different thing to be the first winner of an award, as is the case with my insignificant self and the Brskovski Gros award, which was given to me at the sixth International Literary Festival Slova slovenska. In that sense, I can only hope that the book Mother, Let Me Go offers a high enough standard to help set the aesthetic and poetic bar for future winners. So it’s an exceptional honor to be the first winner, and the promotion of this novel in Montenegro matters a great deal to me, because it tells a tragic family story that mostly unfolded in Montenegro. It’s no surprise that my first promotional event was in Podgorica, then Niksic, and now here in Mojkovac. There will be one in Budva as well. In that sense, it means a great deal to me that the first award of my career to come from Montenegro is this one,” Marojevic said.

A first laureate, whether he intends to or not, sets a benchmark. That is the biggest stake for a prize like this: young awards are not judged by their prize money but by who they choose while no one is watching yet.

What else happened at the festival

The festival ran on August 7 and 8, organized by the NGO “Slova slovenska” and RTV Mojkovac. The program went well beyond a single award ceremony:

• a literary evening dedicated to Slovak poet Milan Rihter, whose poems were adapted into Serbian by Radomir Uljarevic and performed by Radoje Mijuskovic
• an appearance by Macedonian poet Slave Djordje Dimoski
• the presentation of Dado Topic’s book, along with a lifetime achievement award that also went to singer Sheyla Bonnick of the Sounds of Boney M project
• a performance by Radenko Stojanovic, better known as Vudo Popaj, and a closing concert by the ethno group “Zora” from Bar

Accepting his award, Topic said he hopes future winners will serve culture and art, and that this region will continue to safeguard the culture of Montenegro and the wider region, as it traditionally has. It sounds like a standard festival line, but in Mojkovac, a town without the literary infrastructure of major cultural centers, the sentence carries measurable weight: the amphitheater stage in “Pjesnikova dolina” (Poet’s Valley) was built specifically for the festival.

One question remains that a single award ceremony cannot settle. A contemporary literature prize handed out in Mojkovac, worth a thousand euros and without any tradition behind it yet, will carry exactly as much weight as the jury’s choices give it over the next three or four years. For now, the jury has reached for a book that lives not on its subject matter but on how that subject is told.