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"Drakulić’s composite portrait provides a clear-eyed look at European values, and what they really amount to." —The New Yorker
An evocative and timely collection of essays that paints a portrait of Eastern Europe thirty years after the end of communism.
An immigrant with a parrot in Stockholm, a photo of a girl in Lviv, a sculpture of Alexander the Great in Skopje, a memorial ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the Soviet led army invasion of Prague: these are a few glimpses of life in Eastern Europe today. Three decades after the Velvet Revolution, Slavenka Drakulic, the author of Cafe Europa and A Guided Tour of the Museum Of Communism, takes a look at what has changed and what has remained the same in the region in her daring new essay collection.
Totalitarianism did not die overnight and democracy did not completely transform Eastern European societies. Looking closely at artefacts and day to day life, from the health insurance cards to national monuments, and popular films to cultural habits, alongside pieces of growing nationalism and Brexit, these pieces of political reportage dive into the reality of a Europe still deeply divided.
About the Author
Slavenka Drakulić (1949) is a noted Croatian writer and publicist, whose books have been translated into many languages.In her fiction Drakulić has touched on a variety of topics, such as dealing with illness and fear of death inHolograms of fear; the destructive power of sexual desire inMarble skin; an unconventional relationship inThe taste of a man; cruelty of war and rape victims inS. A Novel About the Balkans(made into a feature film As If I Am Not There, directed by Juanita Wilson); a fictionalized life of Frida Kahlo inFrida's bed. In her novel Optužena (English translation forthcoming), Drakulić writes about the not often addressed topic of child abuse by her own mother. In her novelDora i MinotaurDrakulic writes about Dora Maar and her turbulent relationship to Pablo Picasso, and how it affected Dora's intellectual identity. In her last novelMileva Einstein, teorija tugeshe writes about Einstein's wife Mileva Maric. The novel is written from Mileva's point of view, especially describing how motherhood and financial and emotional dependence on Einstein took her away from science and professional life.Drakulić has also published eight non-fiction books. Her main interests in non-fiction include the political and ideological situation in post-communist countries, war crimes, nationalism, feminist issues, illness, and the female body. InHow We Survived Communism;Balkan Express;Café Europashe deals with everyday life in communist and post-communist countries. In 2021, Drakulic wrote a sequel to Café Europa,Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism. Drakulic wrote the history of communism through the perspective of animals inA Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism. She explores evil in ordinary people and choices they make inThey Would Never Hurt a Fly War Criminals On Trial In The Hague, about the people who committed crimes during the Croatian Homeland war. On the other side, in Flesh of her flesh (available in English only as an e-book) Drakulić writes about the ultimate good – people who decide to donate their own kidney to a person they have never met. Her first book, Deadly sins of feminism (1984) is available in Croatian only:Smrtni grijesi feminizma.Drakulić is a contributing editor in The Nation (USA) and a freelance author whose essays have appeared in The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine and The New York Review Of Books. She contributes to Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), Internazionale (Italy), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), The Guardian (UK), Eurozine and other newspapers and magazines.Slavenka Drakulić is the recipient of the 2004 Leipzig Book-fair ”Award for European Understanding.” At the Gathering of International Writers in Prague in 2010 she was proclaimed as one of the most influential European writers of our time.
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