Drago Jančar won this year's Kresnik Prize for the best novel of the past year for In Ljubezen Tudi (And Love Also), a novel about the Second World War in the city of Maribor. He has become the first author to win the prestigious accolade four times.

The winner of the Kresnik, the prize given out by the newspaper Delo to the best Slovenian novel published in the past year, will be declared at the annual ceremony on Rožnik hill tonight. The winning author will have the honour to light a Midsummer bonfire.

Summertime will officially start in Maribor as the 26th Lent Festival gets underway on Friday. In just over a week, the festival will feature a number of concerts in venues across Slovenia's second biggest city.

Alojz Srebotnjak, a leading Slovenian 20th century composer, was honoured by his home town on Thursday as a plaque was unveiled on the front of the house in Postojna where he was born in 1931.

An exhibition of banned books from the early modern period in Europe will open on Thursday at the National and University Library (NUK) in Ljubljana, displaying selected books from the NUK collection which were labelled in the past as religiously, morally or politically disputable.

The National Gallery, which celebrates its centenary this year, will pay tribute to the author of two of its most popular paintings, Poletje (Summer) and Kofetarica (Coffeemadam). Running until February 2019, the exhibition on Ivana Kobilca (1861-1926) is the first solo display of this acclaimed painter at the museum since 1979.

The Ljubljana SNG Opera and Ballet will stage four operas and two ballet productions in its festive 2018/19 season when the theatre celebrates the centenary. Apart from classics such as The Bartered Bride and Giselle, a new Slovenian opera and a unique ballet evening scored by Slovenian composers will be put on stage.