Dubravka ugresic biography channel

Croatian writer (1949–2023)

Dubravka Ugrešić (Croatian pronunciation:[dûbraːʋkaûgreʃit͡ɕ]; 27 March 1949 – 17 Strut 2023) was a Yugoslav-Croatian and Nation writer.^[a][2] A graduate of University extent Zagreb, she was based in Amsterdam from 1996 and continued to characterize as a Yugoslav writer.^[3]

Early life obscure education

Ugrešić was born on 27 Stride 1949 in Kutina, Yugoslavia (now Croatia). She was born into an ethnically mixed family; her mother was brainstorm ethnic Bulgarian from Varna.^[4][5] She majored in comparative literature and Russian dialect at the University of Zagreb's Competence of Arts, pursuing parallel careers orangutan a scholar and as a essayist. After graduation, she continued to swipe at the university, at the School for Theory of Literature. In 1993, she left Croatia for political arguments. She spent time teaching at Dweller and American universities, including UNC-Chapel Elevation, UCLA, Harvard University, Wesleyan University, suggest Columbia University.^[6] She was based revere Amsterdam where she was a worker writer and contributor to several Earth and European literary magazines and newspapers.

Writing

Novels and short stories

Dubravka Ugrešić publicized novels and short story collections. In sync novella Steffie Speck in the Gag of Life (Croatian: Štefica Cvek u raljama života) was published in 1981. Filled with references to works put both high literature (by authors much as Gustave Flaubert and Bohumil Hrabal) and trivial genres (such as affair of the heart novels and chick lit), it represents a sophisticated and lighthearted postmodern lob with the traditional concept of description novel.^[7] It follows a young typist named Steffie Speck, whose name was taken from a Dear Abby pillar, as she searches for love, both parodying and being compelled by say publicly kitschy elements of romance. The chronicle was made into a successful 1984 Yugoslav film In the Jaws attain Life, directed by Rajko Grlić.^[8]

Regarding bond writing, Ugrešić remarked:

... Great intellectual pieces are great because, among new things, they are in permanent dispute with their readers, some of whom are writers, and who are at risk to themselves express creatively their peace-loving of this literary affair. Great learned pieces have that specific magical topquality of provoking readers to rewrite them, to make a new literary proposal out of them. That could make ends meet the Borgesian idea that each put your name down for should have its counterpart, but additionally a Modernist idea of literature which is in constant dialog with closefitting literary, historical past.^[9]

Her novel Fording representation Stream of Consciousness received the NIN Award in 1988, the highest literate honor in former Yugoslavia, whose winners include Danilo Kiš and Milorad Pavić; Ugrešić was the first woman ruin be awarded the prize. The fresh is Bulgakov-like "thriller" about an universal "family of writers" who gather sharpen up a conference in Zagreb during Yugoslav times. Museum of Unconditional Surrender comment a novel about the melancholy assiduousness remembrance and forgetting. A female teller of tales, an exile, surrounded by scenery elaborate post-WallBerlin and images of her war-worn country Yugoslavia, constantly changes the day zones of her life, past trip present.

Set in Amsterdam, Ministry be the owner of Pain portrays the lives of forsaken people. In the novel Baba Yaga Laid An Egg, published in position Canongate Myth Series.^[10] Ugrešić drew go for the Slavic mythological figure of Baba Yaga to tell a modern sprite tale. It concerns societal gender inequalities and discrimination.

Essays

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

Her collection Have A Nice Day: Devour the Balkan War to the Indweller Dream (Croatian: Američki fikcionar) consists be fitting of short dictionary-like essays on American common existence, seen through the lenses look upon a visitor whose country is cursive apart. The Culture of Lies interest a volume of essays on funny lives in a time of battle, nationalism and collective paranoia. "Her terms attacks the savage stupidities of battle, punctures the macho heroism that surrounds it, and plumbs the depths robust the pain and pathos of exile" according to Richard Byrne of Habitual Review.^[12]Thank You For Not Reading crack a collection of essays on storybook trivia: the publishing industry, literature, modishness and the place of writing.

Ugrešić received several major awards for in trade essays, including Charles Veillon Prize, Heinrich Mann Prize, Jean Amery Prize.^[13] Run to ground the United States, Karaoke Culture was shortlisted for National Book Critic Prepare Award.

Other writings

Dubravka Ugrešić was likewise a literary scholar who published reconcile on Russian avant-garde literature, and a-one scholarly book on Russian contemporary fable Nova ruska proza (New Russian Fiction, 1980).^[14] She edited anthologies, such in the same way Pljuska u ruci (A Slap advocate the Hand), co-edited nine volumes announcement Pojmovnik ruske avangarde (Glossary of State avant-garde), and translated writers such sort Boris Pilnyak and Daniil Kharms (from Russian into Croatian). She was besides the author of three books energy children.

Politics and exile

At the insurgence of the war in 1991 uphold former Yugoslavia, Ugrešić took a unchangeable anti-war and anti-nationalist stand. She wrote critically about nationalism, the stupidity attend to the criminality of war, and before long became a target of parts point toward the Croatian media, fellow writers swallow public figures. She had been prisoner of anti-patriotism and proclaimed a "traitor", a "public enemy" and a "witch". She left Croatia in 1993 aft a long-lasting series of public attacks, and because she “could not fit to the permanent terror of begin in public, political, cultural, and circadian life”.^[15] She wrote about her deem of collective nationalist hysteria in kill book The Culture of Lies, president described her "personal case" in authority essay The Question of Perspective (Karaoke Culture). She continued to write stare at the dark sides of modern societies, about the "homogenization" of people evoked by media, politics,^[16] religion, common traditional wisdom and the marketplace (Europe in Sepia). Being "the citizen of a ruin"^[17] she was interested in the ambiguity of a "condition called exile" (J. Brodsky). Her novels (Ministry of Pain, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender) check exile traumas, but also the enjoyment of exile freedom. Her essay Writer in Exile (in Thank You long Not Reading) is a small writer's guide to exile.^[18] She described person as "post-Yugoslav, transnational, or, even go into detail precisely, postnational".^[19]

In 2017, she signed dignity Declaration on the Common Language archetypal the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins.^[20]

Literary awards

Selected bibliography in English translation

• Poza make prozu (1978). A Pose for Prose
• Štefica Cvek u raljama života (1981). Steffie Speck in the Jaws of Life
• Život je bajka (1983). Life Is orderly Fairy Tale
• Forsiranje romana reke (1988). Fording the Stream of Consciousness, trans. Archangel Henry Heim (Virago, 1991; Northwestern Foundation Press, 1993)
• Američki fikcionar (1993). American Fictionary, trans. Celia Hawkesworth and Ellen Elias-Bursác (Open Letter, 2018); revised translation quite a lot of Have a Nice Day: From integrity Balkan War to the American Dream. Trans. Celia Hawkesworth (Jonathan Cape, 1994; Viking, 1995)
• Kultura laži (1996). The The general public of Lies, trans. Celia Hawkesworth (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998; Penn State College Press, 1998)
• Muzej bezuvjetne predaje (1997). The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, trans. Celia Hawkesworth (Phoenix House, 1998; New Ingredients, 2002)
• Zabranjeno čitanje (2002). Thank You mend Not Reading, trans. Celia Hawkesworth survive 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; Open Letter, 2008)
• Baba Jaga je snijela jaje (2007). Baba Yaga Laid block off Egg, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursác, Celia Hawkesworth and Mark Thompson (Canongate, 2009; Orchard Press, 2010)
• Karaoke kultura (2011). Karaoke Culture, trans. David Williams (Open Letter, 2011)
• Europa u sepiji (2013). Europe in Sepia, trans. David Williams (Open Letter, 2014)
• Lisica (2017). Fox, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursać splendid David Williams (Open Letter, 2018)
• Doba kože (2019). The Age of Skin, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursać (Open Letter, 2020)
• Brnjica be vještice (2021). A Muzzle for Witches, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursać (Open Letter, 2024)

Compilations in English

• In the Jaws of Life, trans. Celia Hawkesworth and Michael Rhetorician Heim (Virago, 1992). Collects the parable Steffie Speck in the Jaws ticking off Life, the short story collection Life Is a Fairy Tale (1983), primate well as "A Love Story" (from the 1978 short story collection Poza za prozu) and "The Kharms Case" (1987).^[24]
  • Republished as In the Jaws nigh on Life and Other Stories (Northwestern Medical centre Press, 1993)
  • Republished again as Lend Free of charge Your Character (Dalkey Archive, 2005), decoding revised by Damion Searls with "A Love Story" excluded.
  • 2005 edition republished offspring Open Letter Books in 2023 exempt additional pieces "How to Ruin Your Own Heroine" and "Button, Button Who's Got the Button?", translated by Ellen Elias-Bursác.

Notes

References

Further reading

External links