A short life of the author
Dubravka Ugrešić (1949–2023) was born on 27 March 1949 in Kutina, Yugoslavia (now Croatia). She studied comparative literature and Russian at the University of Zagreb. She left Croatia in 1993 after being labelled a “witch” by nationalist intellectuals for her anti-war stance, and lived in exile in the Netherlands for the rest of her life.
Life and Career
Ugrešić’s early work — Štefica Cvek u raljama života (In the Jaws of Life, 1981) — was a postmodern comic novel. After the Yugoslav wars, her work became sharper, angrier, and more politically urgent.
Muzej bezuvjetne predaje (The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, 1996) — structured as a series of museum exhibits — is a novel about exile, memory, and the objects people carry from destroyed lives. Ministarstvo boli (The Ministry of Pain, 2004) — about a Croatian professor teaching Yugoslav literature to exiled students in Amsterdam — explores what happens to a culture when the country that produced it ceases to exist.
Major Works and Themes
Ugrešić wrote about exile, cultural memory, nationalism, kitsch, and the destruction of the cosmopolitan Yugoslav civilization she grew up in. She was one of the most intellectually formidable and funniest writers in contemporary European literature.
Key Works
- The Museum of Unconditional Surrender (1996)
- The Ministry of Pain (2004)
Collecting Ugrešić
English translations (New Directions, Open Letter, Dalkey Archive) bring $15–$30. Croatian originals are available from Zagreb publishers. Ugrešić died in 2023.