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.

The Ministry of Pain

Literature & Fiction

Ugrešić, Dubravka

Contemporary

Ecco

Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&amp;M clothing at a sweatshop they call the "Ministry." Abandoning literature, Tanja encourages her students to indulge their "Yugonostalgia" in essays about their personal experiences during their homeland's cultural and physical disintegration. But Tanja's act of academic rebellion incites the rage of one renegade member of her class—and pulls her dangerously close to another—which, in turn, exacerbates the tensions of a life in exile that has now begun to spiral seriously out of control.

The Ministry of Pain: A Novel

Have a Nice Day: A CROATIAN WR

RANDOM HOUSE UK

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: Antipolitical Essays (Post-Communist Cultural Studies)

History

Europe

Penn State University Press

A Croatian writer records her impressions of American culture, offering a fictional "dictionary" that simultaneously critiques the shallowness of America's cultural obsessions as it clearly views the current barbarism of Balkan politics. 10,000 first printing.

Have a Nice Day: From the Balkan War to the American Dream

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Viking Adult

"The Culture of Lies" shows us the banality and brutality of nationalism and the way that nationalistic ideology permeates every pore of life. Ugresic'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, aggression against people's own 'brothers', 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 sarcasm and satire, "The Culture of Lies", written in the tradition of Milan Kundera and Karl Kraus, is a gesture of intellectual resistance by a writer brandished 'a traitor' and 'a witch' in Croatia. This is one of the most intelligent and lucid accounts of an appalling episode in history.

The Culture of Lies

Phoenix Paperbacks

According to Russian myth, Baba Yaga is a witch who lives in a house built on chicken legs and who kidnaps small children. In Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, internationally acclaimed writer Dubravka Ugresic takes the timeless legend and spins it into a fresh and distinctly modern tale of femininity, aging, identity, and love. With barbed wisdom and razor-sharp wit, Ugresic weaves together the stories of four women in contemporary Eastern Europe: a writer who grants her dying mother’s final wish by traveling to her hometown in Bulgaria, an elderly woman who wakes up every day hoping to die, a buxom blonde hospital worker who’s given up on love, and a serial widow who harbors a secret talent for writing. Through the women’s fears and desires, and their struggles against invisibility, Ugresic presents a brilliantly postmodern retelling of an ancient myth that is infused with a human warmth . . . [and] the sweet magic of storytelling”(Times Saturday Review).

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

Literary

Canongate U.S.

According to Slavic myth, Baba Yaga is a witch who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. In Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, internationally acclaimed writer Dubravka Ugresic takes the timeless legend and spins it into a fresh and distinctly modern tale of femininity, aging, identity, and love. With barbed wisdom and razor-sharp wit, Ugresic weaves together the stories of four women in contemporary Eastern Europe: a writer who grants her dying mother’s final wish by traveling to her hometown in Bulgaria, an elderly woman who wakes up every day hoping to die, a buxom blonde hospital worker who’s given up on love, and a serial widow who harbors a secret talent for writing. Through the women’s fears and desires, and their struggles against invisibility, Ugresic presents a brilliantly postmodern retelling of an ancient myth that is infused with humanity and the joy of storytelling.

GROVE PRESS

Ironic, playful, and multilayered, winner of three major prizes for the best Yugoslav novel of 1988, this beguiling novel-about-a-novel is set at an international literary conference in Zagreb. It begins with the death of an anti-Franco poet who slips into the pool of the intercontinental Hotel and continues with a rapid and entertaining chain of events involving espionage, sexual intrigue, murder, and a good deal of one-upmanship among the assembled academics.In the style of David Lodge, the novel is filled with colorful characters and hilarious scenes; but amid the lighthearted action Ugresic provides a serious and doubly outsidered perspective on the differences between the worlds of Eastern Europe and the West. Through the eyes of her Yugoslav and Russian characters Ugresic expresses the incredulity that many in Eastern Europe felt at the Western tendency to romanticize the "communist" world; simultaneously, through her American character, she explodes many of the myths of the West in the minds of Eastern Europe. In addressing issues of mutual cultural misunderstanding without attempting to impose artificial solutions to the problems, Ugresic has produced a truly successful multicultural novel.

Fording the Stream of Consciousness (Writings from an Unbound Europe)

Northwestern University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ugrešić, Dubravka. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ugrešić, Dubravka

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ugrešić, Dubravka. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Ministry of Pain

The Ministry of Pain: A Novel

Have a Nice Day: A CROATIAN WR

The Culture of Lies: Antipolitical Essays (Post-Communist Cultural Studies)

The Culture of Lies: Antipolitical Essays (Post-Communist Cultural Studies)

Have a Nice Day: From the Balkan War to the American Dream

The Culture of Lies

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

Fording the Stream of Consciousness (Writings from an Unbound Europe)