Drago Jančar

As a novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and essayist, Drago Jančar (1948) is a central figure in contemporary Slovenian literature. His writing has revealed an artistic ability to formulate and express ideas that reach far beyond the spiritual and cultural sphere of his native country, making him the most translated Slovenian writer ever. His novels, essays and short stories have been translated into 33 languages and published in Europe, Asia and the Americas. His dramas have also been staged by a number of foreign theatres, while at home they are frequently considered the highlights of the Slovenian theatrical season.

Awards

Grum Award for best Slovenian theatre play 1982, 1985, 1989, 1995
Grand Prešeren Award 1993
Herder Prize 2003
Jean Améry Prize 2007
Premio Hemingway 2009
Prix Méditerranée 2009
Prix Européen de Littérature 2011
Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger 2014
European Citizens' Prize 2015
Ignazio Silone International Prize 2016
Kresnik Award for best novel of the year 1999, 2001, 2011, 2018
Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša Award 2019
Austrian State Prize for European Literature 2020
Kresnik Award for best novel of the decade 2020
Milovan Vidaković Prize 2021

Others about Drago Jančar

Jančar writes powerful, complex stories with an unostentatious assurance, and has a gravity which makes the tricks of more self-consciously modern writers look cheap [...] Whether they are psychological studies or parables, Jančar reports these episodes with a fine structural balance and, though at times clearly conversing with his literary antecedents, he wears his reading lightly [...] Throughout his stories, Jančar examines the nature of witness, personal, historical and authorial.

Micha Lazarus, Times Literary Supplement
Perpetual relevance is certainly one of Jančar’s unchanging qualities as his works appear to age splendidly well, a good indication of his emerging road to immortality as a classic of world literature.

Alen Širca, Slovenian literary historian, philosopher and translator
His work carries the tone, resonance and grandiosity of a great writer of European awareness.

Jean-Baptiste Para, French poet and translator