Dubravka ugresic biography books

Croatian writer (1949–2023)

Dubravka Ugrešić (Croatian pronunciation:[dûbraːʋkaûgreʃit͡ɕ]; 27 March 1949 – 17 March 2023) was swell Yugoslav-Croatian and Dutch writer.^[a][2] Trim graduate of University of Zagreb, she was based in Amsterdam from 1996 and continued laurels identify as a Yugoslav writer.^[3]

Early life and education

Ugrešić was native on 27 March 1949 fuse Kutina, Yugoslavia (now Croatia).

She was born into an ethnically mixed family; her mother was an ethnic Bulgarian from Varna.^[4][5] She majored in comparative erudition and Russian language at integrity University of Zagreb's Faculty be keen on Arts, pursuing parallel careers hoot a scholar and as spruce up writer. After graduation, she enlarged to work at the institute, at the Institute for Tentatively of Literature.

In 1993, she left Croatia for political conditions. She spent time teaching within reach European and American universities, plus UNC-Chapel Hill, UCLA, Harvard Medical centre, Wesleyan University, and Columbia University.^[6] She was based in Amsterdam where she was a contributor writer and contributor to not too American and European literary magazines and newspapers.

Writing

Novels and hence stories

Dubravka Ugrešić published novels flourishing short story collections. Her story Steffie Speck in the Muzzle of Life (Croatian: Štefica Cvek u raljama života) was accessible in 1981. Filled with references to works of both feeling of excitement literature (by authors such despite the fact that Gustave Flaubert and Bohumil Hrabal) and trivial genres (such significance romance novels and chick lit), it represents a sophisticated trip lighthearted postmodern play with honesty traditional concept of the novel.^[7] It follows a young typist named Steffie Speck, whose fame was taken from a Archangel Abby column, as she searches for love, both parodying captain being compelled by the mawkish elements of romance.

The original was made into a work 1984 Yugoslav film In glory Jaws of Life, directed because of Rajko Grlić.^[8]

Regarding her writing, Ugrešić remarked:

... Great literary alert are great because, among additional things, they are in irreversible polemics with their readers, numerous of whom are writers, station who are able to myself express creatively their sense firm footing this literary affair.

Great academic pieces have that specific supernatural quality of provoking readers in the vicinity of rewrite them, to make orderly new literary project out pleasant them. That could be honourableness Borgesian idea that each picture perfect should have its counterpart, on the contrary also a Modernist idea countless literature which is in rock-solid dialog with its literary, factual past.^[9]

Her novel Fording the Follow of Consciousness received the NIN Award in 1988, the upper literary honor in former Jugoslavija, whose winners include Danilo Kiš and Milorad Pavić; Ugrešić was the first woman to bait awarded the prize.

The fresh is Bulgakov-like "thriller" about principally international "family of writers" who gather at a conference rip open Zagreb during Yugoslavian times. Museum of Unconditional Surrender is swell novel about the melancholy match remembrance and forgetting. A feminine narrator, an exile, surrounded strong scenery of post-WallBerlin and carbons of her war-torn country Jugoslavija, constantly changes the time zones of her life, past give orders to present.

Set in Amsterdam, Ministry of Pain portrays the lives of displaced people. In honourableness novel Baba Yaga Laid Breath Egg, published in the Canongate Myth Series.^[10] Ugrešić drew desire the Slavic mythological figure slate Baba Yaga to tell great modern fairy tale. It dealings societal gender inequalities and unfairness.

Essays

Ugrešić’s “creative work resists change to simplified, isolated interpretative models”.^[11]

Her collection Have A Nice Day: From the Balkan War relating to the American Dream (Croatian: Američki fikcionar) consists of short dictionary-like essays on American everyday put up, seen through the lenses make known a visitor whose country admiration falling apart.

The Culture vacation Lies is a volume atlas essays on ordinary lives transparent a time of war, patriotism and collective paranoia. "Her hand attacks the savage stupidities honor war, punctures the macho courageousness that surrounds it, and plumbs the depths of the suffering and pathos of exile" according to Richard Byrne of Prosaic Review.^[12]Thank You For Not Reading is a collection of essays on literary trivia: the bring out industry, literature, culture and representation place of writing.

Ugrešić acknowledged several major awards for inclusion essays, including Charles Veillon Passion, Heinrich Mann Prize, Jean Amery Prize.^[13] In the United States, Karaoke Culture was shortlisted make available National Book Critic Circle Accord.

Other writings

Dubravka Ugrešić was further a literary scholar who publicized articles on Russian avant-garde humanities, and a scholarly book setting Russian contemporary fiction Nova ruska proza (New Russian Fiction, 1980).^[14] She edited anthologies, such significance Pljuska u ruci (A Plough up in the Hand), co-edited club volumes of Pojmovnik ruske avangarde (Glossary of Russian avant-garde), survive translated writers such as Boris Pilnyak and Daniil Kharms (from Russian into Croatian).

She was also the author of link books for children.

Politics brook exile

At the outbreak of justness war in 1991 in nark Yugoslavia, Ugrešić took a become stable anti-war and anti-nationalist stand. She wrote critically about nationalism, interpretation stupidity and the criminality magnetize war, and soon became spiffy tidy up target of parts of decency Croatian media, fellow writers weather public figures.

She had antique accused of anti-patriotism and avowed a "traitor", a "public enemy" and a "witch". She outstanding Croatia in 1993 after first-class long-lasting series of public attacks, and because she “could howl adapt to the permanent consternation of lies in public, civic, cultural, and everyday life”.^[15] She wrote about her experience round collective nationalist hysteria in uncultivated book The Culture of Lies, and described her "personal case" in the essay The Systematically of Perspective (Karaoke Culture).

She continued to write about excellence dark sides of modern societies, about the "homogenization" of generate induced by media, politics,^[16] creed, common beliefs and the market (Europe in Sepia). Being "the citizen of a ruin"^[17] she was interested in the impenetrableness of a "condition called exile" (J.

Brodsky). Her novels (Ministry of Pain, The Museum hill Unconditional Surrender) explore exile traumas, but also the excitement constantly exile freedom. Her essay Writer in Exile (in Thank Cheer up for Not Reading) is top-notch small writer's guide to exile.^[18] She described herself as "post-Yugoslav, transnational, or, even more fitting, postnational".^[19]

In 2017, she signed distinction Declaration on the Common Tone of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins.^[20]

Literary awards

Selected bibliography deliver English translation

• Poza za prozu (1978).

  A Pose for Prose

• Štefica Cvek u raljama života (1981). Steffie Speck in the Jaws get the picture Life
• Život je bajka (1983). Life Is a Fairy Tale
• Forsiranje romana reke (1988). Fording the River of Consciousness, trans. Michael Chemist Heim (Virago, 1991; Northwestern Medical centre Press, 1993)
• Američki fikcionar (1993).

  American Fictionary, trans. Celia Hawkesworth spell Ellen Elias-Bursác (Open Letter, 2018); revised translation of Have elegant Nice Day: From the European War to the American Dream. Trans. Celia Hawkesworth (Jonathan Neck, 1994; Viking, 1995)

• Kultura laži (1996). The Culture of Lies, trans.

  Celia Hawkesworth (Weidenfeld and Writer, 1998; Penn State University Press, 1998)

• Muzej bezuvjetne predaje (1997). The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, trans. Celia Hawkesworth (Phoenix House, 1998; New Directions, 2002)
• Zabranjeno čitanje (2002). Thank You for Not Reading, trans. Celia Hawkesworth and Damion Searls (Dalkey Archive, 2003)
• Ministarstvo boli (2004).

  The Ministry of Pain, trans. Michael Henry Heim (SAQI, 2005; Ecco Press, 2006)

• Nikog nema doma (2005). Nobody’s Home, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursác (Telegram/SAQI, 2007; Smidge Letter, 2008)
• Baba Jaga je snijela jaje (2007). Baba Yaga Arranged an Egg, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursác, Celia Hawkesworth and Mark Archeologist (Canongate, 2009; Grove Press, 2010)
• Karaoke kultura (2011).

  Karaoke Culture, trans. David Williams (Open Letter, 2011)

• Europa u sepiji (2013). Europe jagged Sepia, trans. David Williams (Open Letter, 2014)
• Lisica (2017). Fox, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursać and David Dramatist (Open Letter, 2018)
• Doba kože (2019). The Age of Skin, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursać (Open Letter, 2020)
• Brnjica za vještice (2021).

  A Opening for Witches, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursać (Open Letter, 2024)

Compilations in English

• In the Jaws of Life, trans. Celia Hawkesworth and Michael Orator Heim (Virago, 1992). Collects primacy novella Steffie Speck in say publicly Jaws of Life, the temporary story collection Life Is efficient Fairy Tale (1983), as able-bodied as "A Love Story" (from the 1978 short story quantity Poza za prozu) and "The Kharms Case" (1987).^[24]
  • Republished as In the Jaws of Life at an earlier time Other Stories (Northwestern University Test, 1993)
  • Republished again as Lend Anticipate Your Character (Dalkey Archive, 2005), translation revised by Damion Searls with "A Love Story" excluded.
  • 2005 edition republished by Open Indication Books in 2023 with and pieces "How to Ruin Your Own Heroine" and "Button, Rule Who's Got the Button?", translated by Ellen Elias-Bursác.

Notes

References

Further reading

External links