Drago Jan?ar graduated from the Law School of Maribor University. He was general editor of the student magazine Katedra and journalist on the Maribor newspaper, Ve?er. He then moved to Ljubljana (1978) and started work as a writer for the Slovenian film production company, Viba. In 1981 he was editor and general secretary of the publishing house of the Association for Slovenian Emigrants, Slovenska Matica, and between 1987 and 1991 he was president of the Slovene PEN Centre.
His literary output includes the novels Petintrideset stopinj [Thirty five degrees] (1974), Galjot [Galiot] (1978), Severni sij [Aurora borealis] (1984), Mocking Desire (1993), Zvenenje v glavi [Resounding in one's head] (1998) and Katarina, pau in jezuit [Katarina, the peacock and the Jesuit] (2000), in addition to six books of short stories.
He has been awarded numerous national and international prizes, including the drama prize of the former Yugoslavia (Sterijno pozorje, 1982 and 1985), the Slovene national prize for literature (Prešernova nagrada, 1993), the European prize for short prose works (Arensberg, Germany, 1994) and the Herder Prize (2003).
