As part of the Fabula Hub program, which the Fabula Festival dedicates to young and promising voices of contemporary literature, we will be hosting Czech poet, writer and publicist Marek Torčík, one of the most prominent authors of the younger generation in the Czech Republic, in Celje.

The focus of the evening will be his debut novel Disintegration into memories, a multi-award-winning literary work for which he received the Magnesia Litera Award and the Jiří Orten Award in 2024, and the novel was also selected for the 10th Susanne Roth Award for Young Translators of Czech Literature. The work has generated widespread resonance in the Czech literary scene, with critics comparing Torčík's writing to authors such as Ocean Vuong and Édouard Louis.

The novel is written in a fragmentary, non-linear form that follows the dispersion of memory. The protagonist, a petite queer boy growing up in a small industrial town, faces violence at school and difficult family circumstances. His mother, a poor factory worker, is caught up in caring for her dying father, marked by alcoholism, while also unable to accept her son's sexual identity. One of the few bright spots in the protagonist's life is his friendship with a Roma classmate, Marian.

In the novel Disintegration into memories Torčík convincingly and accurately describes the lives of people on the margins of society, and asks whether painful memories of the past can ever be left behind. The story begins one night at 3:37 a.m., when the main character is awakened by a phone call, and then unfolds through flashbacks into a coming-of-age story that reveals the personal and collective memory of the family.

The evening will be dedicated to a conversation about memory, class exclusion, gender identity, and writing as a way to deal with experiences that are difficult to put into words. We will read selected excerpts from the novel and reflect on how literature provides a space for voices that are often unheard.

The discussion will be moderated by Špela Setničar, with reading interpretation of the excerpts prepared by Lovro Zafred. The event will be held in English with simultaneous interpretation into Slovenian.