Archipelagos of Memory. Drago Jančar and Central Europe

25 March 2026, 18.00

Join us for a meeting with one of Central Europe's most important writers, Drago Jančar, to discuss his book “Archipelagos: A Personal Atlas of questions and experiences”. The author will talk about the places and experiences that shaped his thinking about history, memory and the writer's responsibility.

During the discussion at the ICC, we will talk about Drago Jančar's essays, which create a map of Europe seen from the perspective of individual fate – full of cracks, contradictions and recurring traumas. The conversation will also focus on the role of literature as a tool of conscience, a way of talking about 20th-century violence and the meaning of the concept of Central Europe today.

The conversation with the author will be moderated by Dr Dominika Kaniecka.

Biographies:

Drago Jančar – Slovenian writer, playwright and essayist, one of the most important contemporary Central European authors. His novels, short stories and plays are considered milestones of Slovenian prose, translated into many languages and appreciated around the world. A lawyer by training, he worked as an editor for the Maribor daily Večer, and from 1981 to 2016 he was associated with the cultural and scientific association Slovenska matica in Ljubljana as an editor and secretary. He is the winner of numerous literary awards, including the Austrian State Prize for European Literature – Österreichischer Staatspreis für Europäische Literatur (2020). The characters in his works are passionate, torn by fate, entangled in history and chance. In addition to prose and drama, a significant part of his oeuvre consists of essays in which he analyses the contemporary condition of man and society with insight and courage.

Dr Dominika Kaniecka – a graduate of Croatian Studies, since 2014 an assistant professor at the Institute of Slavonic Philology at the Jagiellonian University, she has also worked at the University of Zagreb and promoted Polish culture in Croatia on behalf of the Polish Embassy. She has also given lectures at universities in Ljubljana and Sarajevo. She is a member and co-founder of the inter-institutional Post-Yugoslav Area Laboratory at the University of Warsaw, a member of the Slavic Culture Committee of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (2016-2025) and the Polish Committee for Balkan History and Culture (AIESEE). She coordinated the Polish part of the international translation project “Found in Translation”. 

The book “Archipelagos. A Personal Atlas of questions and experiences”

Translated from Slovenian by Nikodem Szczygłowski and Joanna Pomorska.

The second volume of the Ister series, edited by Łukasz Galuska, Paulina Małochleb and Bartosz Sadulski.

The publication is available in paper form.

Buy the book “Archipelagos. A Personal Atlas of questions and experiences” at the MCK bookshop.