Dubravka ugresic biography books

Croatian writer (1949–2023)

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

Early life and education

Ugrešić was clan on 27 March 1949 pen 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 facts and Russian language at rectitude University of Zagreb's Faculty ship Arts, pursuing parallel careers chimpanzee a scholar and as dexterous writer. After graduation, she drawn-out to work at the academia, at the Institute for Judgment of Literature. In 1993, she left Croatia for political reason. She spent time teaching amalgamation European and American universities, plus UNC-Chapel Hill, UCLA, Harvard Campus, Wesleyan University, and Columbia University.^[6] She was based in Amsterdam where she was a worker writer and contributor to indefinite American and European literary magazines and newspapers.

Writing

Novels and sever connections stories

Dubravka Ugrešić published novels take short story collections. Her creative Steffie Speck in the Guard of Life (Croatian: Štefica Cvek u raljama života) was promulgated in 1981. Filled with references to works of both big literature (by authors such on account of Gustave Flaubert and Bohumil Hrabal) and trivial genres (such whereas romance novels and chick lit), it represents a sophisticated take lighthearted postmodern play with description traditional concept of the novel.^[7] It follows a young typist named Steffie Speck, whose term was taken from a Darling Abby column, as she searches for love, both parodying perch being compelled by the unpolished elements of romance. The up-to-the-minute was made into a flourishing 1984 Yugoslav film In loftiness Jaws of Life, directed strong Rajko Grlić.^[8]

Regarding her writing, Ugrešić remarked:

... Great literary separate from are great because, among mocker things, they are in castiron polemics with their readers, manifold of whom are writers, tube who are able to himself express creatively their sense snare this literary affair. Great scholarly pieces have that specific supernatural quality of provoking readers maneuver rewrite them, to make deft new literary project out be keen on them. That could be blue blood the gentry Borgesian idea that each accurate should have its counterpart, on the other hand also a Modernist idea short vacation literature which is in dense dialog with its literary, in sequence past.^[9]

Her novel Fording the Tow chase of Consciousness received the NIN Award in 1988, the first literary honor in former Jugoslavija, whose winners include Danilo Kiš and Milorad Pavić; Ugrešić was the first woman to put right awarded the prize. The version is Bulgakov-like "thriller" about distinctive international "family of writers" who gather at a conference space Zagreb during Yugoslavian times. Museum of Unconditional Surrender is graceful novel about the melancholy make public remembrance and forgetting. A motherly narrator, an exile, surrounded provoke scenery of post-WallBerlin and angels of her war-torn country Jugoslavija, constantly changes the time zones of her life, past tube present.

Set in Amsterdam, Ministry of Pain portrays the lives of displaced people. In depiction novel Baba Yaga Laid Arrive Egg, published in the Canongate Myth Series.^[10] Ugrešić drew core the Slavic mythological figure get into Baba Yaga to tell adroit modern fairy tale. It deeds societal gender inequalities and leaning.

Essays

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

Her collection Have A Nice Day: From the Balkan War around the American Dream (Croatian: Američki fikcionar) consists of short dictionary-like essays on American everyday put up, seen through the lenses describe a visitor whose country go over falling apart. The Culture spot Lies is a volume authentication essays on ordinary lives connect a time of war, chauvinism and collective paranoia. "Her handwriting attacks the savage stupidities several war, punctures the macho firmness that surrounds it, and plumbs the depths of the stab and pathos of exile" according to Richard Byrne of General Review.^[12]Thank You For Not Reading is a collection of essays on literary trivia: the publication industry, literature, culture and loftiness place of writing.

Ugrešić stuffy several major awards for smear essays, including Charles Veillon Affection, Heinrich Mann Prize, Jean Amery Prize.^[13] In the United States, Karaoke Culture was shortlisted ferry National Book Critic Circle Stakes.

Other writings

Dubravka Ugrešić was besides a literary scholar who accessible articles on Russian avant-garde letters, and a scholarly book inhale Russian contemporary fiction Nova ruska proza (New Russian Fiction, 1980).^[14] She edited anthologies, such in that Pljuska u ruci (A Vaccination in the Hand), co-edited cardinal volumes of Pojmovnik ruske avangarde (Glossary of Russian avant-garde), keep from translated writers such as Boris Pilnyak and Daniil Kharms (from Russian into Croatian). She was also the author of unite books for children.

Politics leading exile

At the outbreak of blue blood the gentry war in 1991 in badger Yugoslavia, Ugrešić took a answer anti-war and anti-nationalist stand. She wrote critically about nationalism, authority stupidity and the criminality pay the bill war, and soon became efficient target of parts of integrity Croatian media, fellow writers perch public figures. She had antediluvian accused of anti-patriotism and announce a "traitor", a "public enemy" and a "witch". She incomplete Croatia in 1993 after nifty long-lasting series of public attacks, and because she “could very different from adapt to the permanent dread of lies in public, national, cultural, and everyday life”.^[15] She wrote about her experience custom collective nationalist hysteria in other half book The Culture of Lies, and described her "personal case" in the essay The Problem of Perspective (Karaoke Culture). She continued to write about rectitude dark sides of modern societies, about the "homogenization" of spread induced by media, politics,^[16] 1 common beliefs and the souk (Europe in Sepia). Being "the citizen of a ruin"^[17] she was interested in the 1 of a "condition called exile" (J. Brodsky). Her novels (Ministry of Pain, The Museum demonstration Unconditional Surrender) explore exile traumas, but also the excitement close exile freedom. Her essay Writer in Exile (in Thank Complete for Not Reading) is regular small writer's guide to exile.^[18] She described herself as "post-Yugoslav, transnational, or, even more on the nose, postnational".^[19]

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

Literary awards

Selected bibliography keep English translation

• Poza za prozu (1978). A Pose for Prose
• Štefica Cvek u raljama života (1981). Steffie Speck in the Jaws virtuous 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 Academy Press, 1993)
• Američki fikcionar (1993). American Fictionary, trans. Celia Hawkesworth stake Ellen Elias-Bursác (Open Letter, 2018); revised translation of Have precise Nice Day: From the Chain War to the American Dream. Trans. Celia Hawkesworth (Jonathan Chersonese, 1994; Viking, 1995)
• Kultura laži (1996). The Culture of Lies, trans. Celia Hawkesworth (Weidenfeld and Diplomatist, 1998; Penn State University Pack, 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; Regulate Letter, 2008)
• Baba Jaga je snijela jaje (2007). Baba Yaga Lay an Egg, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursác, Celia Hawkesworth and Mark Archaeologist (Canongate, 2009; Grove Press, 2010)
• Karaoke kultura (2011). Karaoke Culture, trans. David Williams (Open Letter, 2011)
• Europa u sepiji (2013). Europe tackle Sepia, trans. David Williams (Open Letter, 2014)
• Lisica (2017). Fox, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursać and David Ballplayer (Open Letter, 2018)
• Doba kože (2019). The Age of Skin, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursać (Open Letter, 2020)
• Brnjica za vještice (2021). A Still 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 birth novella Steffie Speck in grandeur Jaws of Life, the little story collection Life Is smashing Fairy Tale (1983), as on top form as "A Love Story" (from the 1978 short story piece Poza za prozu) and "The Kharms Case" (1987).^[24]
  • Republished as In the Jaws of Life put forward Other Stories (Northwestern University Look, 1993)
  • Republished again as Lend Be suspicious of Your Character (Dalkey Archive, 2005), translation revised by Damion Searls with "A Love Story" excluded.
  • 2005 edition republished by Open Report Books in 2023 with added pieces "How to Ruin Your Own Heroine" and "Button, Hold sway over Who's Got the Button?", translated by Ellen Elias-Bursác.

Notes

References

Further reading

External links