Ugresic, Dubravka 1949–

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Ugresic, Dubravka 1949–

PERSONAL: Born March 27, 1949, in Kutina, Yugoslavia; emigrated from Croatia, 1993. Education: Attended the University of Zagreb.

ADDRESSES: Home—Amsterdam, Netherlands.

CAREER: Writer, educator, essayist, short-story writer, and novelist. Institute for Literary Theory, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Yugoslavia, former professor of Russian language and literature.

AWARDS, HONORS: Yugoslavian literary awards for Forsiranje romana-reke; Gjalski Award; Mesa Selimovic Award; NIN Award; Award of the City of Zagreb; European Essay Award; Heinrich Mann Award, Berlin Arts Academy; Charles Veillon European Prize; Austrian State Prize for European Literature; Dutch Resistance Prize; German SudWest Funk Prize; Premio Feronia-Citta di Fiano, Italy; Strega Award nomination, Italy.

WRITINGS:

Poza za prozu (stories; title means "Pose for Prose"), Centar drustvenih djelatnosti Saveza socijalisticke omladine Hrvatske (Zagreb, Yugoslavia), 1978.

Zivot je bajka: Metaterxies, Graficki zavod Hrvatske (Zagreb, Yugoslavia), 1983.

Forsiranje romana-reke (novel), August Cesarec (Zagreb, Yugoslavia), 1988, translation by Michael Henry Heim published as Fording the Stream of Consciousness, Virago Press (New York, NY), 1991.

Americki fikcionar, Durieux (Zagreb, Yugoslavia), 1993.

In the Jaws of Life, translation by Celia Hawkesworth, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1993.

Have a Nice Day: From the Balkan War to the American Dream, translation by Hawkesworth, Viking (New York, NY), 1994.

Kultura Lazi: Antipoliticki eseji, Arkzin (Zagreb, Yugoslavia), 1996, translation by Hawkesworth published as The Culture of Lies: Antipolitical Essays, Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, PA), 1998.

The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, New Directions (New York, NY), 1999.

Thank You For Not Reading: Essays on Literary Trivia, translation by Hawkesworth and Damion Searles, Dalkey Archive Press (Normal, IL), 2003.

Lend Me Your Character (short stories), translation by Hawkesworth and Heim, revised by Damion Searles, Dalkey Archive Press (Normal, IL), 2005.

The Ministry of Pain (novel), translation by Heim, Ecco (New York, NY), 2006.

Author of other untranslated works, including Nova ruska proza (title means "New Russian Prose"), 1980, and Zivot je bajka (stories; title means "Life Is a Fairy Tale"), 1983. Author of television and film scripts. Work represented in anthologies.

SIDELIGHTS: Author, fiction writer, and educator Dubravka Ugresic is a critic and essayist whose works have generated controversy for their pointed criticism on such topics as the publishing industry and the dilution of the importance of literary awards. Official reaction to Ugresic's political commentary led her to leave her native Croatia in 1993 and take up a life of exile. In essays such as those collected in The Culture of Lies: Antipolitical Essays, Ugresic takes a candid look at Yugoslavia during the Communist era and its aftermath. She critiques the country's culture and questions whether very much has changed since the fall of communism. In her view, Yugoslavian lives were and still are founded on sexism, political brainwashing, and lies. The essays in The Culture of Lies "will enrage and sadden you and then fill you with disgust toward narrow-minded nationalism," advised Mirela Roncevic in the Library Journal. "Ugresic defends her viewpoint skillfully and confidently."

In Have a Nice Day: From Balkan War to the American Dream Ugresic describes her flight from Croatia and her subsequent wanderings. Described by a Booklist contributor as "part diary, part vignette, part frantic journal entry, part vocabulary for the country-less," Have a Nice Day provides a portrait of Americans as compulsively busy people in aggressive pursuit of happiness, charges Croatian and Serbian nationalists as using religious and patriotic symbols for their own ends, and reflects on the pleasure and sorrow of escaping the horrors of her homeland. Commenting on Have a Nice Day, a Publishers Weekly reviewer declared that the author's "nervous, precise prose is a pleasure to read."

In Thank You For Not Reading: Essays on Literary Trivia, Ugresic presents her critique of publishing in the United States and meditates on what success means for exiled Eastern European writers such as herself and for Western writers as well. She finds that she and writers like her have little chance to succeed in the Western marketplace, when their different attitudes and foreign-ness infuse their writing with a perspective not well-tolerated in American publishing. She finds that the distinction between "high literature" and lower forms of writing no longer exists within Western publishing; instead, concern exists only for what sells, which allows sports figures, celebrities, criminals, and other non-writers to achieve the status of published writers while those writers of merit go unheeded. She sees modern writing as leaning toward the extremes of violence and sexual material and lacking substantive content. She explores in a tongue-in-cheek manner how she believes modern editors would reject outright many masterpieces of literature if they were submitted today. Ugresic also notes with gravity that books serve as both tools and weapons, as the means for dictators and despots to both spread their message and strike at their enemies. "Ugresic's irony is biting and often self-deprecating, but the ink from her pen is darkest when she discusses questions of culture and literary production in her homeland, Croatia," commented Aida Vidan in World Literature Today. In the book, Ugresic releases a "variety of arrows from her rhetorical quiver, among them a sharp sense of irony, a keen sense of humor, and an edged contempt for the banality (and pervasiveness) of contemporary American culture," commented a Kirkus Reviews critic. Mirela Roncevic, writing in the Library Journal, commented that "it would be simplistic to label this collection a critique of publishing when it is so much more. What emerges here is a portrait of the critically acclaimed but still struggling writer toiling to accept the consequences of popular literature, which she neither consumes nor values."

The Ministry of Pain addresses questions of identity, exile, personal memories, and the effects when one's country, language, and heritage are wiped out of existence. Protagonist Tanya Lucic, a Yugoslav and ethnic Croatian abandoned by her husband in Berlin, secures a one-year contract to teach at the University of Amsterdam. Her course attracts other exiles and persons displaced from their homelands, and the classroom becomes a sort of safe haven and therapy group as the diverse group explores the meaning of exile and displacement, how plans and dreams can be crushed at the whim of uncontrollable forces, and how some exiles are both perpetrators and victims. The novel presents the reader with "striking vignettes of emotional shellshock, linguistic displacement and limbo-like stasis," observed a contributor to Kirkus Reviews. "An experienced essay writer, Ugresic skillfully incorporates her cutting commentaries on her old homeland as well as on the screen-distorted reality of the Hague Tribunal," commented Aida Vidan in World Literature Today. Frank Caso, writing in Booklist, noted that "this sorrowful tale packs a powerful punch." The Kirkus Reviews contributor concluded that "when Ugresic's sharp gaze turns to the minute and the arcane" the novel "achieves inimitable, devastating clarity."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 1995, Janet St. John, review of Have a Nice Day: From the Balkan War to the American Dream, p. 1306; January 1, 2006, Frank Caso, review of The Ministry of Pain, p. 62.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2003, review of Thank You for Not Reading: Essays on Literary Trivia, p. 1168; February 1, 2006, review of The Ministry of Pain, p. 110.

Library Journal, March 1, 1995, Pamela R. Daubenspeck, review of Have a Nice Day, p. 95; October 1, 1998, Mirela Roncevic, review of The Culture of Lies: Antipolitical Essays, p. 118; September 1, 2003, Mirela Roncevic, "Plea of an Exiled Writer," review of Thank You for Not Reading, p. 40.

New Criterion, September, 2004, Tess Lewis, "Literature v. Trivia," review of Thank You for Not Reading, p. 71.

Publishers Weekly, March 6, 1995, review of Have a Nice Day, p. 48; September 20, 1999, review of The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, p. 74; July 14, 2003, review of Thank You for Not Reading, p. 63.

World Literature Today, May-August, 2004, review of Thank You for Not Reading, p. 90; September-December, 2005, Aida Vidan, review of The Ministry of Pain, p. 102.