The Commander of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity, the highest decoration awarded for extraordinary achievements in culture, art and science and for the knowledge and popularisation of the Italian language and culture, was conferred on Matvejevic by the Italian president and presented to him by Italian Ambassador to Croatia Alessandro Grafini.
Matvejevic has been a professor of Slavic studies at Rome's La Sapienza University for the last ten years, Grafini said, adding that he authored a large number of works translated into several languages, the best known one being "Mediterranean Breviary".
Since the 1970s Matvejevic has been engaged, as a writer and intellectual, in defending freedom of thought and speech, and in promoting dialogue between religions and nations. He contributed significantly to the mutual understanding of the Italian and Croatian cultures, Grafini said.
Predrag Matvejevic was born in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1932. He started Italian language studies in Sarajevo and completed them in Zagreb. He earned his doctor's degree in comparative literature and esthetics at Sorbonne in 1967. He taught French literature at the Zagreb Faculty of Philosophy. In 1991 he emigrated to France, and later moved to Italy. Since 1994 he has been a Slavic studies professor at La Sapienza University.