Most of your books are about people who have found themselves in an extreme existential situation, a situation of despair, although they have done nothing to bring that upon themselves. How have you faced the evil and injustice you have suffered?

I have always rejected evil in the name of immortality and freedom of thought. I have never wanted to live in the world as it is, but in a world where I was one of the heroes, one of the victors. My poetry is in fact a fight against the emotional apathy of man and the world. The laughter in the collection of poems Balada o smehu (Ballad about Laughter) is suppressed, subdued and grotesque with a sense of terror, anxiety and fear, but it represents a silent cry for faith and hope, for doing something about this mad and deranged world.

How do you experience the world of today?

There are no real standards or values that would guide life in the world today.

You say your life has been very difficult...

Some things were really unbelievable. It all started in Kostanjevica na Krasu, where I was born. My father was a teacher there. Well, there was a wicked fellow and he had the school pulled down, which cost my father his job and us our livelihood. We left Kostanjevica as refugees for Maribor, then Ribnica, and ended up in Ljubljana. There, I finished secondary school and chemistry studies, while being involved in social and political movements throughout.

As?

As a social democrat, following the example of the Nordic countries. I was politically involved in student protests; we were mainly resisting the movement for a greater Serbia, which had a very despotic and haughty attitude towards Slovenia. I resisted it in every possible way, including writing. I wrote literature even as a student.

You joined the national liberation movement at the beginning of World War II...

.. and just as I was about to leave for the partisans, someone grassed on me. I was therefore taken to the Dachau concentration camp at the end of 1943 and later on to Sachenhausen and Klinker. When I returned home, I was arrested in April of 1948 and sentenced to twelve years in prison, convicted as being a Gestapo agent in German concentration camps. In 1971 it was legally established that I had been unlawfully convicted and imprisoned. I depicted this experience in the novel Umiranje na obroke (Dying by Degrees), which came out in 1984.

What actually happened at the time?

Authorities at that time thought that I was a Gestapo agent, just because I was in Dachau. What could you possibly do there as an agent?! I spent more than two years in the Dachau camp, together with Prežihov Voranc [a Slovenian writer]. The camp in Sachenhausen was even worse. Then there was the notorious Dachau Process at which nine former internees, chemical engineers by profession, were convicted. They were all leftist-oriented. When I worked as a chemical engineer at the Ministry of Industry, where the director was the legendary Luka Leskovšek, a devoted communist, I was offered the post of the general manager of the Chemical Industry of Slovenia, provided I testify against my colleagues at the main Dachau Process. They were all convicted of espionage. They were all colleagues of mine from my student years and I said that they deserved to be awarded for their work, rather than imprisoned. Because I refused to "cooperate", I was put in prison for four years. Boris Kraigher, a classmate of mine, had meanwhile become Slovenia's prime minister and, when I came out of prison, he invited me for a drink, saying: "I never thought you were a Gestapo agent, but I preferred to follow the principle that I would rather jail three innocent than have one guilty man escape!" I will never understand such a way of thinking. He also advised me to request a review of the Dachau Process with the state prosecutor.

You later wrote about those injustices in your books. When did you start to write literature?

I probably got the gift from my mother. She had a great sense of humour and a strong will to live. She is depicted as Aunt Jera in the novel Umiranje na obroke. She gave me essential lessons about life; I was so impressed by her personality that I could dedicate her a novel. She always used to say: "Boris, don't you worry, life's just the way it is, sometime good, sometime bad. Be as radicchio, the more it is cut, the more it grows!" This has been the basic principle I have followed in my struggle. I have always stood up. I could never keep my mouth shut, especially if I came across hypocrisy.

This is reflected in your autobiographical novels and polemical essays, distinguished for their social criticism, sharpness, satire and scrupulousness.

The novel Umiranje na obroke is among the best pieces of memoir literature and represents universal criticism of totalitarianism.

You are an individualist in terms of your literature, ideology and ideas, you do not have a gregarious instinct and do not feel group affiliation.

Indeed. I have never been a parrot. I have always braved my dreadful fate and kept true to myself. I have always known that you cannot reap happiness if you sow injustice.

In the 60s and 70s you mainly wrote plays...

...and literature. My second novel was Smrt na počitnicah (Death on Holiday), and was sold out as fast as the first. It speaks about what happens to people who do not die, but live forever. It is a humorous, ironic story. My most widely known plays are Pravljica o smehu (A Fairy Tale about Laughter), Pisana žoga (Coloured Ball), Pozabljeni ljudje (Forgotten People), Balada o taščici (Ballad about Robin), Požar (Fire), Revizor 74 (Auditor 74)...I have written altogether 16 theatre plays.

Your plays produced rather mixed reactions when they were staged, nevertheless you were one of the most prominent playwrights of the time.

Pisana žoga was considered to be a milestone and a sign of something happening in Slovenian theatre. I have always been an optimist, even when in prison. When I was released on parole, I was prevented from writing, and had no options as a chemical engineer either; and yet I did not stop working. I put my name up for anonymous calls for theatre, TV or radio plays. I took part in four competitions and won awards in all. I got quite a lot assistance from Stane Sever [an actor], who persuaded those in charge to give him back my script, which they had kept in a drawer for some years, and then directed Pisana žoga. The play is an uncompromising portrayal of the social situation between the World Wars. I was hugely criticised for allegedly being offensive towards the national liberation struggle and war veterans. I sent the text to Belgrade, where it was translated and put on in a theatre. Sometime later I received an envelope with a document from Marshal Tito - it was an award for the play. On his birthday he sat in his VIP box applauding my play, which was performed all over the Balkans. Later, the play was also translated in German. You see, abroad I was heartily welcomed, while here they threw mud at me.

Despite your venerable age (90 years), you do not seem to have exhausted your creative potential yet.

That is true. I would like to publish my last collection of poetry about the homeless. Did you know that there are more than one thousand of them in Ljubljana? Some 900 are completely lost, while some have been marginalised without reason; some of them only want a glass of good wine. Those, I do not hesitate to give money to for a couple of bottles of the best wine. I first found out where they meet up and then started going there to talk to them. I am most interested in the way they think and feel.

In 1999 you were decorated with the highest state honour - the Golden Order of Freedom -- for your loyalty to the Slovenian cause? and your literary oeuvre. Some understood the award as being a special kind of apology on the part of the state. You received a letter of congratulation from President Janez Drnovšek upon your 90th birthday. What did it say?

It said: Having managed to keep a sense of humour and faithfulness to humanism and the Slovenian cause, despite your bitter life experience, you are a role model for many a Slovenian. Joie de vivre that was so delightfully portrayed in Balada o Smehu, humanity, and the faith in it, you have managed to keep into your venerable age. The energy exuded by what you have said and wrote, the unrelenting and critical art so typical of your oeuvre have impressed many who know your life and work. You have always considered silence ignoble and the search for justice your life mission. These two principles are universal for every individual and the greatest legacy you have given to the nation, apart from your highly esteemed oeuvre.