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WINNER OF:
THE JAMES TIPTREE JR AWARD 2010
THE PEN WRITERS IN TRANSLATION AWARD 2006
UK ARTS COUNCIL AWARD 2006
THE S. FISCHER FELLOWSHIP, FREI UNIVERSITAT BERLIN 2006
PREMIO FERONIO-CITTA DI FIANO, ITALY 2004
HEINRICH MANN PRIZE 2000
FELIX MERITIS FOUNDATION PRIZE AMSTERDAM 1999
OSTERRECHISCHEN STAATSPREIS EUROPAISCHE LITERATUR 1999
SWF-BESTENLISTE LITERATURPREIS 1998
VERZETSPRIJS AMSTERDAM 1997
PRIX EUROPEEN DE I'ESSAI 'CHARLES VEILLON', ZURICH 1996
NOMINATED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2009
NOMINATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2011
SHORTLISTED FOR NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD 2011
‘A writer to follow, a writer to be cherished.’ Susan Sontag
‘A unique tone of voice, a madcap wit and a lively sense of the absurd. Ingenious.’ Marina Warner
Shortlisted for NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD 2011
Over the past three decades, Dubravka Ugresic has established herself as one of Europe’s greatest – and most entertaining – thinkers and creators, and it’s in her essays that Ugresic is at her sharpest. With laser focus, she pierces our pop culture, dissecting the absurdity of daily life with a wit and style that’s all her own.
Whether it’s commentary on jaded youth, the ways technology has made us soft in the head, or how wrestling a hotel minibar into a bathtub is the best way to stick it to The Man, Ugresic writes with unmatched honestly and panache. KARAOKE CULTURE is full of candid, personal, and opinionated accounts of topics ranging from the baffling worldwide-pop-culture phenomena to the detriments of conformist nationalism. Sarcastic, biting, and, at times, even heartbreaking, this new collection of essays fully captures the outspoken brilliance of Ugresic’s insights into our modern world’s culture and conformism, the many ways in which it is ridiculous, and how (deep, deep down) we are all true fools for it.
'Ugresic returns with a brilliant collection of timely essays... moves nimbly from karaoke to Communism, from IKEA to the symbolism of insects in literature, providing smart and witty cultural insight alongside Eastern European history.' Publishers Weekly
'Ugresic writes in short, episodic sections, making surprising leaps. An essay that begins with a Hemingway look-alike contest hops quickly to the arrest of Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic. The connections are electric: It's an intellect in action, ideas zapping across the page... Karaoke Culture is an essential investigation of our times.' Los Angeles Times
'In the pieces collected here, she sounds like the fantasy cultural-studies professor you never had, making crazy connections between unlikely ideas that turn out to be brilliant... Ugresic's anecdotes and aperçus are as irresistibly quotable - 'The Internet is the final, most explosive powder keg strewn on the eternal flame of our fantasies' - as they are haunting.' The New Republic
'Sometimes you kill a song, and other times you flop. When it comes to Karaoke Culture, however, I can do nothing but tip my hat to a masterful performance.' Three Percent
'Whether it's commentary on jaded youth, the ways technology has made us soft in the head, or how wrestling a hotel minibar into a bathtub is the best way to stick it to The Man, Ugresic writes with unmatched honesty and panache. Karaoke Culture is full of candid, personal, and opinionated accounts of topics ranging from the baffling worldwide-pop-culture phenomena to the detriments of conformist nationalism. Sarcastic, biting, and, at times, even heartbreaking, this new collection of essays fully captures the outspoken brilliance of Ugresic's insights into our modern world's culture and conformism, the many ways in which it is ridiculous, and how (deep, deep down) we are all true suckers for it.' The University of Rochester
'Croatian author Dubravka Ugresich (Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, The Ministry of Pain) is one of Europe's most celebrated writers with works translated into 20 languages and multiple international awards to her name, including a 2009 nomination for the Man Booker International Prize. In her newest collection of essays, Karaoke Culture, she takes on everything from pop culture to nationalism to hotel minibars with an unmatched mixture of honesty and humor.' Brookline Art and Entertainment
'Reading Karaoke Culture is, in the best way possible, much like sitting with a highly caffeinated intellectual over tea. Ugrešić is a conversational writer; the zig-zagging structure of her essays suggests a fluid writing process that hews close to the author's thoughts as she works from each initial observation to a final, incisive epiphany. Her cultural touchstones are restricted neither by country nor time nor genre: within the collection she makes easy reference to everything from Gone with the Wind and IKEA to Bulgarian Idol and Henry Darger. When these disparate references cohere within one essay, the effect is luminous... Throughout the collection, Ugrešić's outspoken, absurdist humor and her genuinely global perspective shine through. Karaoke Culture is a rarity: a thoughtful, personal and informative work of socio-cultural critique that doesn't take itself too seriously.' L Magazine, New York
Fabrika Knjiga Serbia
Fraktura Croatia
Berlin Verlag Germany
Open Letter Press, Rochester Univ. USA
Galaade Editions France
Material: finished copies of Croatia and American editions (324pp)
Nominated for the INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2011
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 travelling to her home town 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 harbours 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.
'Powerful... Majestc... Ugresic has created a wise, sharp fairy tale of her own.' Jessa Crispin NPR
‘Reaffirms the glorious power of storytelling. A book packed with intellectual surprises and emotional revelations’ Metro
‘Ugresic’s retelling may be blisteringly post modern in its execution but at its heart is a human warmth and even a silliness that infuses it with the sweet magic of storytelling.’ The Times
'A mirthlessly witty divertimento on female old age. Ugresic’s meta-narrative sings with intelligence; its cryptic weirdness challenges the reader. . . . A whirligig of outrageous invention.' The Independent
'Ugresic's instincts as a storyteller are sure...A playful, inventive, and humane look at women and aging.' Kirkus Review
'Beautifully written, dolefully humorous . . . Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is a grown up novel with grown up prepositions; its humane vision of the world is driven by great imaginative impetus.' Times Literary Supplement
'A profound and startling meditation on femininity and aging.' London Review of Books
Canongate UK
Berlin Verlag Germany
Tiderne Skifter Denmark
Bonnier Sweden
Znak Poland
Eesti Estonia
Sigmapress Macedonia
Geopetika Serbia
Vukovic & Runjic Croatia
Teorema Portugal
Ink House Bulgaria
Eksmo Russia
Grove Atlantic USA
De Bezige Bij NL
Nottetempo Italy
Ithaki Turkey
VBZ Slovenia
Nottetempo Italy
Nyitott Hungary
Material: finished copies of various language editions (UK edition 327pp).
Ugresic at her sharpest, most controversial, most incisive. These are crucial essays for our times.
Ugresic reflects on big themes through the smallest of lenses, In ‘USA Nails’ she manages to find a connection between this post-September 11th world and New York nail bars. She gives small, seemingly trivial subjects – a cellar, a bird’s house, bottled water – universal meaning. She mixes the local and the global, the universal and the particular and raises the question of what is eastern in Western Europe and vice versa. As such, Nobody’s Home is an ‘after the fall of the Wall’ collection, the introductory motto being: ‘The Wall fell down. It fell on every man, on all of us.’
Ugresic’s essays surf with ease through places, culture, recent history, politics and everyday trivia. Constantly shifting perspectives she manages to draw the mental coordinates of our age. Nobody’s Home provides the reader with a light and humorous personal view on our dynamic contemporary everyday.
‘Her details are so very good: her fear of the dominant ficus plant in former Yugoslavia; her near-contraband purchases in Berlin; precise flavours from behind the-iron-curtain-as-was, including an archaic can of zgushchenka, Soviet-era Russian condensed milk that could be spread like jam. It is not all ostalgia for the former east's vanished parallel consumer world. She is just as exact on the meaning of the Vietnamese nail parlour in present-day New York, and on Amsterdam: its trees, its migrants who smuggle parrots and wash the dead for a living. I happened to read the Amsterdam sequence in exactly the picture-windowed, venerable Dutch cafe she wrote about, and felt dizzy as her description of the city overlapped and then overlaid the city outside the glass. Exactly accurate.’ Guardian
‘An exile from post-Yugoslav Croatia but not merely a 'Croatian' writer, Ugresic writes sharp and funny essays on life and art in a Europe where the actual, but not mental, borders have come down. From charming sketches on the value of luggage and the lure of gardens to migrants 'expelled from paradise', to finely observed longer pieces on Amsterdam (where she lives), the madness of 'identity' culture and 'the brisk fragrance of fresh money' in post-Communist states, she never commits a sloppy thought or a turgid sentence. Under her gaze, the tiredest topics of the 'tired' continent (migration, multiculturalism, 'new Europe') spring to life. Ellen Elias-Bursac's translation captures all her irony and mischief.’ Boyd Tonkin, Independent
‘This collection of her essays glitters with witty and profound observations on modern Europe. A genuinely free-thinker, Ugresic's attachment to absurdity leads her down paths where other writers fear to tread.’ The Independent
‘This book is part memoir, part shrewd observation, part travel writing at its best. Each section opens with a loving quotation from the Russian satirists Ilf and Petrov, and Ugresic writes with something of their impish genius.’ Elaine Feinstein, The Telegraph
Fabrika Knjiga Serbia & Croatia
Fakel Bulgaria
Saqi UK
Berlin Verlag Germany
De Geus Holland
Anagrama Spain
ZNAK Poland
Open Letter Press, Rochester Univ. USA
Sphinx Agency Egypt
Albin Michel France
Material: Serbo-Croat, English, Dutch and German editions (278pp).
Shortlisted for THE ANGELUS PRIZE in Poland
Shortlisted for THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE 2006
Tanja Lucic is a young professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam. There, she finds her students are only a little younger than herself, and, like her, ex-Yugoslavs, refugees, exiles. Some of her students also work at the “Ministry”, a shop making things for the porn industry. All of her students have been uprooted, must confront their memories – emotional cocktails of loss, guilt and trauma – and ask whether they can salvage what is left of their broken lives. Amid the tense political climate of the war crime trials at The Hague, the novel elaborates a growing attraction between Tanja and her student Igor, but can future generations be spared the horror and suffering that they have witnessed? In a sophisticated first-person narrative, Ugresic asks to what extent exiles can ever truly give voice to their feelings in any language.
'...an edgy, extraordinary novel...specifically rooted in the disintegration of Yugoslavia but also offering universal insights into what it is like to lose home, nationality and language.' The Sunday Times
'Ugresic's work is unflinching and provocative, forever forging a balance between her cynicism of the West and her despair of, and obvious love for, the Balkans. This a disturbing read that should have you in its thrall.' The Times
‘A brave, accomplished, cultured novel, sombre and witty… despite the breadth and depth or its political and literary ambitions, the novel is possessed of a wonderful, clear simplicity. There are very pure pleasures in Ugresic’s honesty, her lightsome, moving prose, her ability to dance in a flash from outrage to satire to a heartfelt exposition of beauty.’ Guardian
'Ugresic's cunning, subtle technique is at its most powerful here. Tragedy mingles with pastiche and bizarre humours.The novel's conclusion is a profound and beautiful meditation on lost homes and territories, on the broken syntax of memory, on the self-inventions of rehabilitated refugees and on the capability to return and find what we left behind.' The Independent
‘Such is the sad state of our world today that there are a good many writers who have access to such imagery. Reading The Ministry of Pain, one of the first things you realise, though, is that there are few who handle it as sharply and unfussily as Ugresic. These are the details in which God (and the devil) hides. Ugresic shows as much genius for them in her fiction as she has in her essays, The Culture of Lies (1998), and the recent, marvellous Thank You For Not Reading… Ugresic's wit, driven by light lashes of irony and recurrent gallows humour, and her language, graceful and simple in Michael Henry Heim's superbly painless translation, make her themes - exile, absence, the coping stratagems of homelessness - more easily grasped than one might expect… She has produced a novel of insights and shocks. It is one that is both profound and brilliantly illuminated by a very humane clarity… After reading Ugresic, I felt that if I'd had to be in a Balkan foxhole in the early 1990s and had had her for company, I wouldn't have lacked for jokes, or a decent chance of survival. So sure is her grasp of her themes, in fact, that it really constitutes a further pillar of her own argument: that perhaps the only way to attempt to make peace with events is to write about them. Exile equals defeat, Tanja reflects, and then the return home equals the return of memory. It is therefore a kind of death, so the moment of departure is the only true moment of freedom. Or the moment of picking up a pen, she might have added.’ Julian Evans, The Telegraph
‘This is a full to the brim, masterly book. Here is someone who can not only tell stories but also think, a writer of world class. Let us hope that the Nobel Prize committee know of her existence.’ Trouw
'Dubravka Ugresic's novel -- if you care about language and how it fails and sometimes succeeds at defining the human condition -- approaches perfection. The translation, the handling of dialects and nuances of what is essentially the same language in five or six different versions, is masterly.' The Washington Post
'I urge you to take a look at Dubravka Ugresic's The Ministry of Pain. The narrator is a brilliantly caustic Croatian university lecturer who decamps to Amsterdam in the mid 1990's to teach the literature of the former Yugoslavia to a group of former Yugoslavians. First they recreate their lost country; then they tear it down.' The Independent, Books of the Year 2005
Fabrika Knjiga Serbia
Faust Vrancic Croatia
Saqi Books UK
De Geus NL
Swiat-Czarne Poland
Berlin Verlag Germany
Fayard France
Anagrama Spain
Albert Bonniers Sweden
Gyldendal Norsk Norway
Fakel Express Bulgaria
Zalozba Meander Slovenia
Tiderne Skifter Denmark
Ecco Press USA
Garzanti Italy
Kronta Lithuania
Like Kustannus Finland
Munhakdongne Korea
L’Harmattan/JAK Hungary
Serial in Hungarian Lettre International
Everest Turkey
Dituria Albania
Polirom Romania
Material: finished copies (240pp).
Thank You For Not Reading is a biting critique of book publishing: agents, subagents, and scouts, supermarket-like bookstores, Joan Collins, book fairs that have little to do with books, authors promoted because of sex appeal instead of merit, and editors trying to look like writers by having their photograph taken against a background of bookshelves. Nowadays, the best strategy for young authors wanting to publish is to become famous in some other capacity first – as a sports star, an actress, or an Ivana Trump.
One if the most interesting and paradoxical comparisons coming out of Ugresic’s dissection of book culture is the similarity between the art of socialist realism (as prescribed by the Soviets) and the nature of the contemporary marketplace to produce and promote art that appeals to everyone. Thanks to Oprah, the Today show, and Kelly Ripa, the publishing machine neglects literature in favor of accessible, entertaining books for the masses.
Consisting of essays and fiction, Thank You For Not Reading is one of those rare books that is both playful and critical. Ugresic’s views on the effects of the media earn her a place alongside other contemporary critics such as Thomas Frank, Neil Postman, and Mark Crispin Miller, but Thank You For Not Reading is more than social critique – it is a well-crafted piece of art.
‘Savage, quotable and perceptive. I held my breath while I raced through this entertaining volume, hoping against hope that Ugresic would sustain it to the last page. The good news is that she does, triumphantly.’ Robert McCrum, Observer
Dalkey Archive Press UK/USA
De Geus NL
Suhrkamp Germany
La Fabrica Spain
Fakel Bulgaria
Swiat Poland
Samizdat 92 Serbia
Konzor Croatia
Fayard France
Nottetempo Italy
Olga Morozova Russia
Material: finished copies (221pp).
Pulled by a little girl from the deepest corner of the wardrobe, a shabby-looking handbag disgorges a long-forgotten past. A silk scarf and a silver cigarette case; a gold coin and a lock of hair; from faded photos peer the faces of a generation only just gone, yet forever lost.
As the girl grows up to be a woman, her own childhood self recedes. Time moves to a faster, more violent rhythm of love and loss, betrayal and exile. In this stunningly original novel the recovered fragments are put on display: the images and anecdotes, the miscellaneous memories that made up a woman’s life.
‘Contains some of the most profound reflections on culture, memory and madness’ The Independent
‘Impressive and deeply felt and deserves a wide readership’ Times Literary Supplement
Samizdat 92 Serbia
Konzor Croatia
Am Oved Israel
Bompiani Italy
Cavalo de Ferro Portugal
Fayard France
Bonniers Sweden
Gyldendal Norsk Norway
Nicolescu Romania
Alfaguara/Santillana Spain
Fakel Press Bulgaria
Suhrkamp Germany
Swiat Literacki Poland
Europa Hungary
Kastaniotis Greece
Dituria Albania
New Directions USA
Material: English translation available.
The voice of Dubravka Ugresic is the voice of contemporary Europe. Her words echo far beyond the borders of her native Croatia to shake the deepest certainties of the West. For if death and destruction have all too literally ravaged the former Yugoslavia, the resulting moral shock waves have set all intellectual Europe adrift.
In this urgent alarm call to her country and her continent, Ugresic shows us the jagged shards of a civilization shattered, its pieces sharp with insight and glinting with wicked irony. This book is as dazzling as it is disturbing, as passionate as it is brave.
‘Can be placed in the company of such landmark chronicles of dissent as Czeslaw Milosz’s The Captive Mind and Vaclav Havel’s Living in Truth.’ Literary Review
Samizdat 92 Serbia
Konzor Croatia
Stigmati Bulgaria
Beletrina Slovenia
Czarne Poland
Mlada Fronta Czech
Radio Prague Czech
Material: English translation available.
This is not a novel, not a travelogue, nor a memoir; it is not a volume of short stories, a diary or a war report. It is simply a wonderful book.
Dubravka Ugresic is Croatia’s finest living writer. Invited to the USA as a lecturer, she finds herself in Middletown, Connecticut, a world away from the brutal sieges of Mostar or Sarajevo, and the nationalist rhetoric of Milosevic or Tudjman. Instead she must cope with everyday life in America, with the cult of the body, of ‘strong personalities’, of ‘organization’, ‘growth’ and public confession.
In the form of a fictional ‘dictionary’, under headings like ‘Couch Potato’, ‘Coca-Cola’, ‘Trash’ and ‘Harassment’, Ugresic allows us to see American culture through the eyes of a woman whose country is being destroyed by war, and forces us to see through the comforting veil of Western consumerism to the barbarism of the Balkans.
The tone of her voice is wry, sad, ruthlessly honest and perceptive. Dubravka Ugresic subjects the dangerous absurdities of our time to deadly, deadpan analysis. Few European writers have contrasted the two polarities of the Western world to more intelligent effect.
‘Intimate and modern at the same time, Ugresic has a unique tone of voice, unfailing in its wit and sceptical intelligence, deceptively casual in the bravery of its truth-telling: she brings one shock of recognition after another.’ Marina Warner
Samizdat 92 Serbia
Konzor Croatia
Suhrkamp Germany (under title MY AMERICAN FICTIONARY)
Stigmati Bulgaria
Czarne Poland
Material: English translation available.
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. In addressing issues of mutual cultural misunderstanding without attempting to impose artificial solutions to the problems, Ugresic has produced a truly successful multicultural novel.
‘Ugresic writes with a sharpened pen. Her voice is unique, her writing elegant and dangerous… Those with a bittersweet tooth for fiction will find it meltingly irresistible.’ Scotland on Sunday
Samizdat 92 Serbia
Konzor Croatia
Czarne Poland
Stigmati Bulgaria
Azbuka Russia
Lumiu Slovenia
Suhrkamp Germany
Material: English translation available.
Collected together in this reissue, the novella STEFFIE CVEK IN THE JAWS OF LIFE and a collection of short stories called LIFE IS A FAIRY TALE solidify Ugresic’s reputation as one of Eastern Europe’s most playful and inventive writers. Steffie Speck is a harassed and vulnerable typist from a lonely hearts column, whose life is shaped entirely by cliché. Ugresic weaves the lives and expectations of those marginalized into the world of popular women’s culture. Always smart and endlessly entertaining.
'Splendidly ambitious… A brilliant, enthralling spread of storytelling and high-velocity reflections… She is a writer to follow. A writer to be cherished.' Susan Sontag
'Ugresic’s wit is bound by no preconceived purposes, and once the story takes off, a wild freedom of association and adventurous discernment is set in motion. Open to the absurdity of all pretensions of rationality, Ugresic dissects the social world, especially the endless nuances of gender and sexuality.' World Literature Today
'As long as some, like Ugresic, who can write well, do, there will be hope for literature.' New Criterion
'A madcap wit and a lively sense of the absurd… Filled with ingenious invention and surreal incident.' Marina Warner
'Ugresic must be numbered among what Jacques Maritain called the dreamers of the true; she draws us into the dream.' Richard Eder, New York Times
'Like Nabokov, Ugresic affirms our ability to remember as a source for saving our moral and compassionate identity.' John Balaban, Washington Post
'Dubravka Ugresic is the philosopher of evil and exile, and the storyteller of many shattered lives the wars in the former Yugoslavia produced… This is an utterly original, beautiful, and supremely intelligent novel.' Charles Simic
Dalkey Archive Press USA
Samizdat 92 Serbia
Konzor Croatia
Czarne Poland
Kjarat Kiado Hungary
Sanje Slovenia
Plon France
Kijarat Kiado Hungary
Polish Theatre rights for Steffie Speck to Krystyna Janda in Warsaw and Ludowy in Krakow
Material: finished copies (200pp). English translation available.
PREVIOUS SALES (RIGHTS REVERTED):
THE CULTURE OF LIES HAVE A NICE DAY: FROM THE BALKAN WAR TO THE AMERICAN DREAM FORDING THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE JAWS OF LIFE
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