Towards European Literature: The Post-Yugoslav Literature of Dubravka Ugresic

Dubravka Ugresic’s career has been shaped by life circumstances and has evolved accordingly. A successful academic in her native Croatia, Ugresic was forced to leave both her post and her country in the 1990s following disagreement with the new regime. An avowed anti-nationalist, Ugresic consequently became a successful European writer who actively engages with the very condition that has defined her: cultural displacement and exile. Her work, written in Croatian, but not widely read in Croatia itself, has been translated in over 15 languages and is considered a staple of the transnational canon, epitomizing the apparent advantages of literary dispatriation. Yet, as this paper argues, despite its astute and searing impartiality, Ugresic’s literary work remains a deeply personal affair with strong roots in her native country. Writing in Croatian, a ‘small’ language as Ugresic terms it, Ugresic embraces the big themes that have afflicted her personally: nationalism, politics, economy, identity, extrapolating her experience onto the social landscape as the writer’s example of living in a complex, modern and multilingual world. This paper investigates the adept manner with which she weaves the personal and the professional as part of her writing and how she champions the very cause of European literature in doing so. Works addressed as part of this paper are: Europe in Sepia (2014),  Karaoke Culture (2011), The Ministry of Pain (2006) and Thank you for not reading (2003).