[2] He was born in an influential Slovene intellectual family in Trieste; his father, Zorko Jelinčič, was among the co-founders of the militant anti-fascist organization TIGR, and a close personal friend of prominent authors such as Vladimir Bartol and Klement Jug.
In 2001, he wrote a play about a planned attack on Benito Mussolini by TIGR members, Upor obsojenih oz Kobarid 38' – Kronika atentata, that was put on stage a decade later by Slovene theatre in Trieste.
[1] In his book 'Starry Nights' (Slovene: Zvezdnate noči), he wrote about his experiences in the 1986 Slovenian expedition to the Karakoram mountain range, that conquered the 8047 m high Broad Peak.
Among Jelinčič's other works, the most famous is 'Night in the Docks' (Tema v pomolu), the Italian translation of which (Scacco nel buio) won the prize Scritture di Frontiera in 2006, ex aequo with Predrag Matvejević.
One of the most important centres of this literary production has been Trieste and the nearby areas of the Slovenian Littoral, with authors as Henrik Tuma, Julius Kugy, Klement Jug, Tone Svetina, Igor Škamperle, and Zorko Jelinčič, Dušan's father.