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Slobodan Novak is a major twentieth-century European prose writer, whose works include a half dozen novels, story collections, and adaptations for television and radio. Born in Split, Yugoslavia in 1924, he was raised on the Adriatic island of Rab, attended school in Split and Zagreb, and became a leading author of contemporary Yugoslav literature in the 1960s. He has won every major Yugoslav and Croatian literary prize and was awarded the Vladimir Nazor prize for lifetime achievement in 1990. His books have been translated into seven languages and adapted for four feature films between 1966 and 1991. He lives in Zagreb and on the island of Rab.

Celia Hawkesworth - Translator of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh

Celia Hawkesworth is emerita Senior Lecturer in Serbian and Croatian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London. She has published numerous articles and several books on Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian literature, including a study Ivo Andric: Bridge between East and West (Athlone Press, 1984); Voices in the Shadows: Women and Verbal Art in Serbia and Bosnia (CEU Press,2000); and Zagreb: A Cultural History (Oxford University Press, 2007). Among her many translations are two works by Dubravka Ugresic, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998: The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, short-listed for the Weidenfeld Prize for Literary Translation, The Culture of Lies, winner of the Heldt Prize for Translation, 1999. Her most recent translated works include Dubravka Ugresic's Lend Me Your Character (Dalkey Archive Press, 2005) andIvo Zanic's Flag on the Mountain (Saqi Books, 2007). This revised translation of Novak's classic is based on the author's extensive revisions to nine editions of his book published in Croatia over the past three decades.