In 2016, Lojze Kovacic was voted the most outstanding Slovenian novelist of the past quarter century by a jury of eighteen leading Slovene literary historians and critics. Archipelago's release of the first volume of his three-volume masterpice Newcomers is the first work by him to appear in English.

Lojze Kovacic was born in Basel in 1928 to a German mother and Slovenian father. In 1938 the family was exiled to Slovenia, where Kovacic lived until his death in 2004. He is considered to be one of Slovenia's most significant authors, and Newcomers is widely regarded the most important Slovenian novel of the twentieth century. He received the Prešeren Award for life achievement in 1973, and the Kresnik Award for best novel in 1991 and 2004 for Crystal Time and Things of Childhood. In addition to his novels and short story collections, Kovacic also published a number of books for children and young readers.


About the Translator:
Michael Biggins has translated works by a number of Slovenia's leading contemporary writers. He currently curates the library collections for Russian and East European studies and teaches in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, both at the University of Washington in Seattle.