A collision between contemporary poetics and the Renaissance lyric, between aestheticism and political engagement, The Master of Insomnia is a collection of Slovenian poet Boris A. Novak's verse from the last fifteen years, including numerous poems never before available in English.

Born in Serbia in 1953, Boris A. Novak is a poet, playwright, editor, essayist, and translator of Bosnian, British, American, French, Provencal, Italian, and German poetry into Slovenian. He has also written for children and published works of literary criticism. He is considered one of the most important living Slovenian poets, and has more then fifty-three books to his name. He is a Professor at the Department for Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana.