Researching Boris Pahor

His success was not instant; openly expressing his disapproval of communism in Yugoslavia, he was not acknowledged and was probably intentionally overseen by his homeland until after Slovenia had gained its independence in 1991. It was not until 2013 that his novel was first translated into English. The first translation (in 1995) was titled Pilgrim Among the Shadows and the second one (in 2010) Necropolis. The masterpiece has been translated into several other languages: Esperanto: Pilgrimanto inter ombroj (1993), French: Pèlerin parmi les ombres (1996), German: Nekropolis (2001, 2003), Catalan: Necròpolis (2004), Finnish: Nekropoli (2006), Italian: Necropoli (2008), Serbian: Necropola (2009), Spanish: Necrópolis (2010), Dutch: Nekropolis (2011), Croatian: Nekropola (2012), Portuguese: Necrópole (2013).

Pahor is a prominent public figure in the Slovene minority in Italy, who were affected by Fascist Italianization. Although a member of the Slovene Partisans, he opposed Titoist Communism as well. He was awarded the Legion of Honour by the French government and the Cross of Honour for Science and Art by the Austrian government, and was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He refused the title of honorary citizen of the capital of Slovenia because he believed that the Slovene minority in Italy (1920–47) was not supported the way it ought to have been during the period of Fascist Italianization by right-wing or left-wing Slovenian political elites. Pahor was married to the author Radoslava Premrl (1921–2009) and, at the age of 99, wrote a book dedicated to her. He is, in addition to Slovene and Italian, fluent in French. Following the death of Marco Feingold on 19 September 2019, he became the oldest living survivor of the Holocaust.