Veno Taufer is one of the founders of Slovene literary modernism, which began flourishing in the 1950s and the 1960s; he is also a precursor of postmodernism. He is a persistent innovator who has cultivated an intellectual, hermetic poetic style. As an avant-garde-oriented translator, critic, editor, playwright, and organizer, he has opened his country's literary horizons to the modern world and facilitated the promotion of Slovene literature internationally while also promoting exchange between modernist authors in the former Yugoslavia. As a member of dissident cultural and political groups in Slovenia he worked to enhance personal and artistic freedom and made an important contribution to the democratization and independence of Slovenia. He was a founder of the Vilenica International Writers' Conference and hence took part in the reaffirmation of the Central European identity.

Veno (Venceslav) Taufer was born on 19 February 1933 in Ljubljana. His father, Venceslav, was a teacher, and...