Inside the Author’s Studio: A Conversation with Dr. Eva Premk Bogataj

Your writing space is often described as calm yet intellectually vibrant. What does your ideal workspace look like?

It’s a blend of quiet precision and creative chaos — dual monitors, handwritten notes, drafts covered in red ink, maps, notebooks, and cups of tea. It’s a space where languages, ideas, sounds, and memories meet. A place that holds both discipline and imagination.

Where does your lifelong relationship with books come from?

I grew up in a home overflowing with books. I genuinely believed walls were meant to be covered with shelves. My first memory is of sitting on the floor, toys arranged in a circle, teaching them from a book I had drawn myself. I was both a reader and a writer before I had words for either.

You often speak about sound and music as an essential part of your world. How did this shape you?

Alongside books, my childhood was filled with music, laughter, and intelligent conversations. I began reading far too early — not children's books, but history, especially the Second World War. That doorway led me to Dostoevsky, Kafka, Selimović, Andrić, Kiš, Brodsky, Dickens, Chekhov, Cankar. Their worlds became part of mine.That early immersion taught me responsibility — to truth, complexity, and listening to every side of a story.

You learned eight languages. How did that shape your writing voice?

Languages open worlds. They show you that reality is layered, contradictory, multilingual. Learning languages abroad taught me that identity is not fixed — it expands. And it made me aware of my place in a long lineage of scientists, artists, and storytellers.

Many readers don’t realize how deeply involved you've been in publishing. What did those years teach you?

They taught me everything about the life cycle of a book — writing, editing, proofreading, translating, layout, paper selection, printing, and final release. While leading marketing at a major Slovenian publishing house, I helped shape bestsellers that are still selling today.Those experiences built the foundation for the precision and vision behind Maestro and Tidldibab.

What motivated you to write this particular novel with such independence?

Integrity. This story needed a unified voice, a consistent heartbeat. I knew the workload this would demand, but I also knew the story could travel globally only if its core remained intact.

What does your writing rhythm look like?

You write when others are sleeping. You write every day.Not out of obligation, but out of devotion. Without discipline, this novel wouldn’t exist.

What inner and intellectual worlds shaped the novel?

Decades of reading, listening, translating, studying, watching, and absorbing. Through my father, I was introduced early to metaphysical teachings from different traditions and religions. Those layers live throughout the novel — sometimes quietly, sometimes in full light.

How did you construct the deeper architecture of the novel?

In layers. Carefully interwoven structures, built with multiple levels of meaning. Readers seeking depth will discover them; others will feel the story naturally, on its emotional and intuitive level. The book adapts to the reader’s consciousness.

Many say the novel feels written by someone who lived multiple lives. Do you agree?

Yes — because it’s true. I lived in many worlds: cultural, academic, linguistic, metaphysical, strategic, artistic. Some stories require exactly that breadth. This novel is one of them.

What do you hope the reader carries with them after reading?

The feeling that they entered a world shaped not by shortcuts, but by a lifetime spent among books — and among the truths they reveal.