Kajetan Kovic has been an important, productive, and successful Slovene writer from his first major appearance in print in 1953. Though the field of Slovene poetry is remarkably crowded for such a small nation (which has some two million inhabitants in all), Kovic has set himself apart by composing short, lucid verse that is often both rhythmic and rhymed. He has avoided ideology, eluded labeling, and maintained a distinctive and recognizable poetic voice. With his 1994 novel, Pot v Trento: Prizori iz navadnega zivljenja Franca M. (The Road to Trent: Scenes from the Commonplace Life of Franc M.), by far the longest item in his corpus, he added something new to his repertory: a memoir of sorts that covers more than half a century of his family's history. It is rich with detail and appears to be deeply personal, and in both regards it resonates quite differently from most of...