A short life of the author
Slavenka Drakulić (born 1949) is a Croatian journalist and novelist whose work documents the lived experience of communism, its collapse, and the wars that followed — not through grand geopolitical narrative but through the textures of daily life: what people ate, wore, feared, and remembered. Her nonfiction, particularly How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (1991), is essential reading for understanding Eastern Europe’s twentieth century.
Life and Career
Drakulić studied comparative literature and sociology at the University of Zagreb and worked as a journalist and editor. Her early career was shaped by feminism — she co-founded the first Yugoslav feminist group — and by a commitment to writing about women’s experience within political systems that officially proclaimed equality while enforcing conformity.
How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (1991) collected essays about everyday life under communism in Yugoslavia and across Eastern Europe. The book’s genius was its focus on material culture — the absence of tampons, the impossibility of finding good underwear, the rituals of food preparation — as evidence of how ideology shaped the most intimate aspects of life. It became an international bestseller and a standard text in post-communist studies.
The Balkan Express (1993) and Café Europa (1996) continued this approach through the Yugoslav Wars and the early post-communist period. Drakulić wrote from inside the disaster, as a Croatian witnessing the dissolution of her country, maintaining a clarity and moral seriousness that distinguished her from sensationalist war reporting.
As If I Am Not There (1999) was her most important novel — based on the systematic rape of women in Bosnia, told from the perspective of a woman held in a rape camp. The novel was adapted into a film in 2010. They Would Never Hurt a Fly (2004) reported from the Hague war crimes tribunal, examining how ordinary people become war criminals.
Key Works
- How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (1991)
- Café Europa (1996)
- As If I Am Not There (1999)
- They Would Never Hurt a Fly (2004)
Collecting Drakulić
First editions (W.W. Norton, Abacus, Hutchinson) are generally affordable at $15–$40. How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed first edition (Norton, 1991) is the key title. Croatian editions are published in small runs. Drakulić’s work is widely taught in universities, which sustains demand. Signed copies are available at literary festivals across Europe.