The Ministry of Pain tells the story of Tanja Lucic, an exile from Yugoslavia and a lecturer in Serbo-Croatian literature at the University of Amsterdam. Her class is filled with other Yugoslav exiles, not much younger than she, who have found temporary refuge in the Department of Slavonic Languages. Rather than teach literature, Tanja prods the students to reconstruct their pasts by writing essays that indulge their "Yugonostalgia" and their memories of Yugoslavia's culture and disintegration in war. Meanwhile, Tanja and her student Igor form a dangerously close relationship that threatens to unleash all the tensions of life in exile. With her sharp and melancholy observations, Dubravka Ugresic illuminates with savage compassion our shared human homelessness.

Ministry of Pain

Literature & Fiction

Dubravka Ugrešić

Contemporary

Saqi Books

Music &amp; Literature no. 6 champions the work of three artists poised for an international breakthrough: Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, Ukrainian composer Victoria Polevá, and Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic. An aura of almost legendary prestige surrounds the short life of Alejandra Pizarnik, who, though haunted by doubt and depression, left behind an oeuvre by turns searing, tragic, playful, and erotic. Her portfolio includes 100 pages of previously untranslated prose, diary entries, and letters, plus new appreciations from, among others, Enrique Vila-Matas and César Aira, who writes that Pizarnik was 'not only a great poet, she was the greatest, and the last.' Equally uncompromising in her artistry is Victoria Polevá, who has written music for many of the world's leading soloists and ensembles while building a reputation as a major cultural figure in Eastern Europe. Though Polevá's music has yet to reach Western audiences, her illustrious contemporaries from around the world attest in verse, in correspondence, and in oils to her singular vision, which the maestro expresses at length in her first major interview in English. Her musical writings on mentors Arvo Pärt and Valentin Silvestrov round out a remarkable portfolio. Since the break-up of her native Yugoslavia, Dubravka Ugresic's fiction has revolved around questions of exile and identity, while her caustic and brilliantly insightful criticism has taken on literature, Yugostalgia, and contemporary hypocrisy in all its forms. Alongside an exclusive interview and a newly-translated work of fiction, appearing here for the first time in any language, this portfolio offers contributions by Ugresic's translators Michael Henry Heim and Damion Searls, as well as a critical overview of her prolific career.

Music & Literature, No. 6

SUSAN SONTAG

Julio Cortázar

Joseph Brodsky

Max Neumann

Taylor Davis-Van Atta

Daniel Medin

Gidon Kremer

ANA BECCIU

Cesar-Aira

Enrique-Vila-Matas

Damion Searls

Alejandra Pizarnik

Victoria Poleva

Music & Literature, Inc.

From the story of Steffie Cvek to "The Kharms Case," the pieces in Dubravka Ugresic's collection Lend Me Your Character are always smart and endlessly entertaining. The former story paints a picture of a harassed and vulnerable typist whose life is shaped entirely by cliches. She searches endlessly for an elusive romantic love in a narrative punctuated by threadbare advice from women's magazines and constructed like a sewing pattern. The latter story is one of Ugresic's funniest and is about the strained relationship between a persistent translator and an unresponsive publisher. The stories collected in Lend Me Your Character the novella "Steffie Cvek in the Jaws of Life" and a collection of short stories entitled "Life Is a Fairy Tale" solidify Ugresic's reputation as one of Eastern Europe's most playful and inventive writers."

Lend Me Your Character

Literary

Dalkey Archive Press

Nobody's Home

Essays & Correspondence

Telegram Books

Used. Very Good conditions. May have soft reading marks and name of the previous owner.

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (Myths)

Canongate Books Ltd.

The Museum of Unconditional Surrender

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

Phoenix House

The Culture of Lies is one of the most intelligent and lucid accounts of an appalling episode in history. It shows us the banality and brutality of nationalism and the way that nationalistic ideology permeates every pore of life. Ugrešić's acerbic and penetrating essays cover everything from politics to daily routine, from public to private life.With a diverse and unusual perspective, she writes about memory, soap operas, the destruction of everyday life, kitsch, the conformity of intellectuals, propaganda and censorship, the strategies of human manipulation and the walls of Europe which, she argues, never really did fall.Shot through with irony and sadness, satirical protest and bitter melancholy, The Culture of Lies is a gesture of intellectual resistance by a writer branded 'a traitor' and 'a witch’ in Croatia.

The Culture of Lies

History

Europe

"Ugresic is sharp, funny and unafraid. . . . Orwell would approve."—Times Literary Supplement
"Every day and age has its rules. Currently, good behavior dictates that we be politically correct, evade conflicts, espouse tolerance, and make no hasty judgments. To be judgmental is viewed as one of the most reprehensible human traits. People are likely to think today that an optimist is a good person, while a pessimist is the lowest of the low. Picking your nose in public is more forgivable then being pessimistic. [. . .] We live in a time that urges us to behave as if we are in paradise. Yet the world we live in is no paradise. This book breaks the rules of good behavior, because it bickers."
This series of thought-provoking and incisive essays from Dubravka Ugresic explores the full spectrum of human existence. From life in exile to life in prison, from bottled-water drinking tourists with massive backpacks to the Eurovision song contest, Ugresic's unfailingly sharp critical eye never fails to reveal what has been hidden in plain sight by routine, or uncover the tragic, and the comic, in the everyday.
Dubravka Ugresic is the author of several works of fiction and several essay collections, including the NBCC award finalist, Karaoke Culture. She went into exile from Croatia after being label a "witch" for her anti-nationalistic stance during the Yugoslav war. She now resides in the Netherlands.
Ellen Elias-Bursac is an American scholar and literary translator. Specializing in South Slavic literature, she has translated numerous works from Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian.

Open Letter

"Baba Jaga je snijela jaje" Dubravke Ugresic izgleda kao neki dugo ocekivani poklon slovenskom citalastvu. Posle prilicnog broja izvrsnih esejistickih i nefikcionalnih dela ove nasim citaocima dobro poznate i drage autorke, evo jedne kompleksne proze Dubravke Ugresic - romana koji u sebi sadrzi sve kvalitete njenog stila (precizno jednostavnog jezika, majstorskih dijaloga, humora, ironije i cinizma). Ali, uz ovu prozu dobili smo i studiju lika iz slovenske mitologije koji je koliko folkloran i mitski, toliko i autorkin i danasnji. Smena smeha i prekora, radosti i sete, blagosti i zestine... cine ovu knjigu koliko prijatnom za citanje toliko i predmetom mnogih opomena i pitanja. Baba Jaga uvek spava s macem pod jastukom. Slovenski citaoci, a srpski ce biti prvi od svih, po svoj prilici ce spavati sa ovom knjigom pod jastukom - kao uspavankom i kao oruzjem istovremeno.

Baba Jaga je snijela jaje

Geopoetika

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Books by Dubravka Ugrešić