Dragan Potočnik: MORPORUK

The mighty column resembled a moving city that knew no rest.

September 1532. The Turks stand at the gates of Maribor, led by Suleiman the Magnificent himself. From the perspective of world history, it is a fleeting episode. For the people who lived through it, it meant infinitely more. And it is about them that Dragan Potočnik writes.

Not in black-and-white tales of heroes and cowards, of love and hatred, loyalty and betrayal. Potočnik allows his characters to be human. For whether they stand on one side of the wall or the other, they are all part of the same story — a story that may seem a mere footnote in the grand narrative of history, yet for them is boundless in meaning. A story eternal: always the same and always different, and above all, complex and layered. Because “the hatred we nurture is not always our own. Sometimes we inherit it. And perhaps we can also lay it down.”

Dragan Potočnik is many things — professor, historian, researcher, traveler, poet, scholar, and writer — but above all a man of passion and love. Islam, the Orient, philosophy, culture, civilization — these are not merely fields of study for him. They are realms of personal experience and deep fascination, which he approaches with both scholarly rigor and artistic sensitivity. No historical event is merely a fact; it is the experience of a moment. And no historical figure is merely a biography; it is a human being shaped by time.

He is an Associate Professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor; president of the Maribor travel society Vagant; and a recipient of the Glazer Charter for his contribution to the culture and scholarship of Maribor. Many roles, many identities — but always, first and foremost, a human being. And a romantic at heart.

Dragan Potočnik will be in conversation with Stane Kocutar.
The evening will include readings from the novel and music.

You are warmly invited to an event that will bring the atmosphere of the novel to life.

The event is organized by Založba Pivec.