Živi klasiki Literary Café

Join us in a café where literary heritage, contemporary thought and current social issues come together through books, music and conversation. In a relaxed atmosphere, we will explore texts that have become classics not simply because they belong to the canon of world literature, but because they remain strikingly relevant. Their characters, themes and ideas continue to resonate with new generations, offering starting points for reflection on the world we inhabit.

Each event will focus on selected literary works and the themes they explore: from human freedom and social control to love, loneliness, technology and the limits of humanity. The talks will be hosted by Primož Vitez – a translator, linguist, playwright, musician and avid reader – who, together with guests from the fields of literature, the humanities, art and the social sciences, will seek new perspectives on works that have stood the test of time and remain fresh precisely because they examine humanity without categorical judgement.

The soundscape of the Literary Café will be co-created by Andrej Ilc, editor of the Živi klasiki (“Living Classics”) collection at Mladinska knjiga and an amateur DJ, who will use carefully curated music to connect classic literary motifs with contemporary sensibilities.

In the 2027 season, the CD Club will host the Literary Café on three occasions. In January, discussions inspired by the novels The Handmaid's Tale, Brave New World and 1984 will explore their unsettling prescience and the way they seem to comment directly on the world we live in today. In February, For Whom the Bell Tolls and Slaughterhouse-Five will open up questions of war, violence and human responsibility for evil. In April, Dracula, The Master and Margarita and Stoner will serve as points of departure for reflections on modern humanity, its fears, desires and search for meaning.

Živi klasiki is not a series of lectures on great books, but a set of encounters that place literary classics in a contemporary context – interpreting the present through their motifs, ideas and themes. Accompanied by conversation, music and a cup of coffee, these works will once again demonstrate their enduring relevance, for they evolve alongside their readers with every new reading.