Smiling Slovenia's collection of articles and essays on Slovenia's current political scene boldly declares its dissenting view from the political mainstream beginning with a declaration of a dozen prominent intellectuals presenting their views of Slovenia's political situation. Topics range from recent Slovenian history, Slovenia's role in the breakup of Yugoslavia, foreign policies, including liaisons with the Islamic terrorists to modern-day Slovenian-American relations and Slovenia's admission into the European Union. This book shows that Slovenia, although outwardly westernized, is still deeply rooted in its communistic legacy. However, prominent intellectuals and democratic politicians strive to hold Slovenia to the highest European cultural, ethical, political, legal, and economical standards in public life - a goal that may take several generations to achieve. Some authors observe that transparency achieved by the present conservative coalition government has already established a state of affairs where return to the old ways of a crypto government would be impossible even if the leftist parties returned to power.

The Nazis and their state-sponsored cohorts stole mercilessly from the Jews of Europe. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, returning survivors had to navigate a frequently unclear path to recover their property from governments and neighbors who had failed to protect them and who often had been complicit in their persecution. While the return of Nazi-looted art has garnered the most media attention, and there have been well-publicized settlements involving stolen Swiss bank deposits and unpaid insurance policies, there is a larger piece of Holocaust injustice that has not been adequately dealt with: stolen land and buildings, much of which today still remain unrestituted. This book is about the less publicized area of post-Holocaust restitution involving immovable (real) property confiscated from European Jews and others during World War II. In 2009, 47 countries convened in Prague to deal with the lingering problem of restitution of pre-war private, communal and heirless property stolen in the Holocaust. The outcome was the issuance by 47 states of the Terezin Declaration on Holocaust Era Assets and Related Issues, which aimed, among other things, to "rectify the consequences" of the wrongful property seizures. This book sets forth the legal history of Holocaust immovable property restitution in each of the Terezin Declaration signatory states. It also analyses how each of the 47 countries has fulfilled the standards of the Guidelines and Best Practices of the Terezin Declaration, issued in 2010 in conjunction with the establishment of the European Shoah Legacy Institute (ESLI) to monitor compliance. The book is based on the Holocaust (Shoah) Immovable Property Restitution Study commissioned by ESLI, written by the authors and issued in Brussels in 2017 before the European Parliament.

For more than 1,300 years Slovenes had lived in Eastern Europe without having a separate Slovene state, but in December of 1990, they voted for independence, or, put more appropriately, for "disassociation" from Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, Slovenia had to fight for its independence, which it did not fully achieve until 1995 after its bloody disintegration with Yugoslavia was over. Since independence, however, Slovenia has prospered; its economy is far ahead of other former communist states and in 2004 Slovenia acceded to both NATO and the European Union, the only republic of former Yugoslavia to do so. The A to Z of Slovenia covers the history of Slovenia and its struggle to gain independence from communism. This is done through a detailed chronology, an introduction, appendixes, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on some of the more significant persons, places, and events; institutions and organizations; and political, economic, social, cultural, and religious facets.

A deftly written novel brimming with magical realist touches, The Feline Plague tells the story of Ira, a Slovenian child who discovers early the cruelty of the adult world—particularly the mistreatment of animals. Ira struggles to reconcile her life with a world in which people are small-minded, the chances for happiness are few, and petty tyrants rule. She takes a job with The Lady, a capitalist entrepreneur who runs the Ark, a pet emporium where she expects “pets will become the new jewelry.” Ira careens into adulthood alongside a fairy-tale cast: her evil mother and sisters, a benevolent grandmother, best friend and alter ego Felipe, a blind painter who moonlights as a window dresser, and a pair of twins so identical their employer thinks they’re one person. Acclaimed novelist Maja Novak masterfully conjures a series of vivid tableaux, setting Ira loose in a world where miniature wooden animals come to life—where jealousy, dreams, and realities unfold as Ira’s rite of passage parallels the backdrop of communism’s dying days and capitalism’s shaky start.