Dušan Jelinčič
Dušan Jelinčič (born in Trieste 1953) is an Italian writer, essayist and mountaineer from Trieste, Italy.
He was born in an influential Slovene intellectual family in Trieste; his father, Zorko Jelinčič, was among the co-founders of the militant anti-fascist organization TIGR, and a close personal friend of prominent authors such as Vladimir Bartol and Klement Jug.
After graduating from modern philology at the University of Trieste, he worked in the Slovene language section of the regional RAI service for Friuli Venezia Giulia.
In 1986, Jelinčič was part of an expedition on the Broad Peak in the Himalayas, becoming the first person from Friuli Venezia Giulia to conquer that peak. In 1990, he climbed the Mount Everest and in 2003 the Gasherbrum II.
He wrote about his experiences in this expedition in the book 'Star Nights' (Zvezdnate noči, 1994), which became a best seller in Italy. The book (translated to Italian as Le notti stellate) was re-published three times, and won four literary prizes, including the international Acerbi Prize. Among Jelinčič's other works, the most famous is 'Night in the Docks' (Tema v pomolu), the Italian translation of which (Scacco nel buio) won the prize Scritture di Frontiera in 2006, ex aequo with Predrag Matvejević.
Jelinčič's writings are part of the tradition of Slovene mountaineer travelogues, which has been an important current within Slovene literature since the fin-de-siecle period. One of the most important centres of this literary production has been Trieste and the nearby areas of the Slovenian Littoral, with authors as Henrik Tuma, Julius Kugy, Klement Jug, Tone Svetina, Igor Škamperle, and Zorko Jelinčič, Dušan's father.
Dušan Jelinčič has also written numerous essays, published in mostly Slovene literary journals, such as Sodobnost and Nova revija.