Zorko Simčič

Zorko Simčič’s novel Človek na obeh straneh stene (The Man on Both Sides of the Wall) was first published in 1957 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Simčič lived from 1948–1994. It was not published in Slovenia until 1991 – that is, until after independence and democratization. Today Človek na obeh straneh stene is considered a fundamental works of Slovenian modernism, and in his foreword to the novel Matevž Kos writes, “With its fabula Simčič’s novel enhances and radicalizes foreignness. It does so on the basis of a concrete life story, telling a tale of homelessness as the universal fate of modern man. With that, his being a refugee also a seeking. We could say that this seeking is for a lost geographical and spiritual homeland. The struggle to recognize the homeland is simultaneously a struggle for self-recognition, an attempt to put oneself and one’s world in the proper place, to reconcile oneself with one’s past, to arrange a relationship with the other and the self, and then to live one’s present to the fullest […].”