ladan was born in ivanjica, serbia, and spent his formative years in his native bosnia and herzegovina (travnik, bugojno), where he graduated from the philosophical faculty at sarajevo. since he couldn't get permanent employment in the then serbs-dominated bosnian cultural life because of his sometimes ostentatious croatian identity, ladan worked intermittently as a private tutor, translator and journalist — until the croatian doyen of belles letters, miroslav krleža, found him a job at the yugoslav lexicographical institute in zagreb. ladan was the director of the same institute and the editor-in-chief of an eight-language parallel dictionary.