With his original and multifaceted productivity, Ivan Slamnig is a writer and scholar who made his distinctive mark on post-World War II Croatian literature (both poetry and prose) and on literary life and scholarship in Croatia.

Born on 24 June 1930 in Metkovic, Croatia, on the Neretva River not far from the Adriatic coast, Slamnig attended school in Metkovic and Dubrovnik; he later attended high school in the Croatian capital, Zagreb. At the University of Zagreb he enrolled in 1948 as a student of Slavic languages and literatures, graduating in 1955. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1980 with a dissertation on Croatian versification that, in a revised form, was published as a book the following year. He became a teacher in the Department of Slavic Studies at Zagreb University but spent several years teaching Serbo-Croatian abroad: in Florence, Italy; Bloomington, Indiana; Chicago, Illinois; Amsterdam; and Uppsala, Sweden. In addition to the main...