Diversity of voices, diversity of languages : one week of events and readings in Lyon and in the Rhône-Alpes region.
Drago Jančar
NOVELIST / ESSAYIST
Slovenia
BiographY
Drago Jančar, born in 1948 in Maribor, Yugoslavia, is a Slovenian writer for theater, essayist and novelist. The son of a resistance fighter deported during World War II, he inherited his father’s drive and continued his combat for freedom in Tito’s Yugoslavia. A well-known dissident, in 1974 he was sentenced to a year in prison for “propaganda in the service of the enemy.” Released after three months, he was nonetheless sent to do military service in Serbia. Very frequently censored, he was long unable to fully satisfy his passion for writing, despite two novels. He therefore chose to move to Ljubljana, where he worked in movie studios. Then the gradual liberalization of the former Yugoslavia after the death of Tito in 1980 gave him the free space necessary for his work to blossom. He went to the United States and Germany, and authored several novels and plays, including his greatest success, La Grande valse brillante. At the same time, he began working as a publisher and militating for writers’ freedom, and continues to serve the cause of freedom: heavily involved in associations such as the Pen Club of Slovenia, he did not hesitate to go to Sarajevo during the Bosnian war to help the people there. The wars in the former Yugoslavia thus became fertile ground for him to think about identity. In 1993, Drago Jančar won the most prestigious Slovenian literary prize, the Preseren, for his work. He also received the European Short Story Prize in 1994, the Austrian Jean Améry Prize for this essay Brioni in 1997, and the Herder Prize for literature in 2003. In 2011 he won the European Prize for literature for his work.
