Vladimir Bartol was born as the third child in a middle-class family to Gregor Bartol, a postal employee, and Marica Bartol-Nadlišek, a writer. His parents provided him with an excellent education, as his mother introduced him to painting, and his father explained biology to him. In his autobiography, he described himself as an overly sensitive child who seemed to himself to be a slightly different child with a rich fantasy. He was fascinated by many things, but he preferred biology, philosophy, psychology, fine arts and, of course, literature, as well as theatre.
He was influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, Machiavelli’s ideas, expressionism and psychoanalysis . His lyrics talk about the will to power, about truth and deception and manipulation of people. His literature deviated from the contemporary literature of social realism . Interest in him at home and abroad increased greatly with reprints and translations in the 1980s.
Vladimir Bartol, as one of more than a hundred thousand coastal refugees, sympathized with the TIGR organization and, according to his contemporary critic Lin Legiša , spoke about its struggle through allegories from the Islamic world, including in the collection Al Araf and the novel Alamut.
