Description

A short novel in Slovenian language by Damir Feigel was published in the Fascist Italy in 1930 in Gorizia by the publishing company Goriška matica, where Feigel worked as a co-editor. 

Goriška matica was a publishing house, founded in Gorizia (today Italy) on a newly Italian controlled territory after WWI, in 1919. It was specialised in publishing Slavic, mostly Slovenian books.

Until the war, the territory with a major Slavic population, belonged to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. After the territory was annexed to Italy, exposing the Slavic inhabitants to growing Fascist power, which during the 1920s started supressing the Slovenian and Croatian language.

Matica in Goricia, run by the Slovenian intellectuals from the region and with a printing press Edinost (Unity) in Trieste, was one of the last Slavic publishing companies, fighting to keep the native language. By the late 1920s all the publications of the press had to undergo a Fascist censorship and hundreds of thousands of books were destroyed. In 1933 the publishing house had to Italianise its name to Unione editoriale Goriziana, and was eventually closed in 1940.

The publications of Goriška matica in the 1920s and 1930s were known for good quality texts of the contemporary Slavic authors from the region of Gorizia, Trieste and Karst, and well designed modern covers, made by academic artists and modern designers.