(Alojzij) Louis Adamic

Writer, born in Blato, S Croatia (formerly, Yugoslavia). He emigrated to the USA (1913), became a citizen (1918), and served in the US Army in World War 1. He lived in Milford, NJ, and began writing short stories in the early 1920s. He wrote many articles, stories, and books based on his experiences in America and his former life in Yugoslavia, the best known being The Native's Return: An American Immigrant Visits Yugoslavia and Discovers His Old Country (1934). Other works include Laughing in the Jungle (1932), Dinner at the White House (1946), and The Eagle and the Root (1950). Although he supported Tito, he was opposed to Soviet Communism, and when he was found dead of a gunshot wound there was inconclusive speculation as to whether he had committed suicide or been murdered by Soviet agents.

Louis Alojzi Adamic (March 23, 1899 – September 4, 1951) was a Slovenian-American author and translator.

Adamic was born at the Praproče castle in Blato ("Mud") near Grosuplje, what is now Slovenia.

In 1913, he emigrated to United States, and finally settled in the Croatian fishing community of San Pedro, California.

All of Adamic's writings are based on his labor experiences in America and his former life in Slovenia. He achieved national acclaim in America in 1934 with his book "The Native's Return," which was a best seller directed against Serbian King Alexander's regime. It contained many insights but proved far from infallible: Adamic predicted that America would prosper by eventually "going left", ie.

He received an award of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1932.

From the year 1940 he served as the editor of the magazine "Common Ground". Adamic was the author of "Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America" (1931);

Plagued by failing health, he shot himself at his residence in Milford, New Jersey. He died at a time of political tension and intrigue in Yugoslavia, and there was press speculation in America that his death might have been an assassination by some Balkan faction, but no proof of that theory has ever surfaced.

According to John McAleer's 1978 biography of Rex Stout, it was the influence of Adamic that led Stout to make his fictional detective Nero Wolfe a native of Montenegro, in what was then Yugoslavia. (Wolfe's origins were murky in the early novels.) Stout and Adamic were friends and frequent political allies, and Stout expressed uncertainty to McAleer about the circumstances of Adamic's death.

Adamic told The Literary Digest: "My name is pronounced in this country (America) exactly as the word Adamic, pertaining to Adam": a-dam'ik. (Charles Earle Funk, What's the Name, Please?, Funk &