[Urgresic] must be numbered among what Jacques Maritain called the dreamers of the true; she draws us into the dream.

Richard Eder, New York Times

Dubravka Ugresic

Dubravka Ugresic was born and raised in what used to be Yugoslavia. She studied Comparative literature and Russian literature at the University of Zagreb. She worked for twenty years at the Institute for Theory of Literature (Faculty of Arts, Zagreb University). She left Croatia in 1993 for political reasons, and has taught on various occasions at American and European universities. She has been awarded several international prizes for her writing: the Swiss “Charles Veillon” European Essay Prize, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, the Dutch “Resistance” Prize, and the German SudWest Funk Prize.

cover image of the book The Museum of Unconditional Surrender

The Museum of Unconditional Surrender

After receiving glowing reviews nationwide. The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, by the renowned Yugoslavian writer Dubravka Ugresic, is now available as a paperback. The novel begins in the Berlin Zoo, with the contents of Roland the Walrus’s stomach displayed beside his pool. (Roland died in August, 1961.) These objects—a cigarette lighter, lollipop sticks, a beer-bottle opener, etc.—like the fictional pieces of the novel itself, are seemingly random at first, but eventually coalesce, meaningfully and poetically. Written in a variety of literary forms, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender captures the shattered world of a life in exile. It addresses the themes of art and history, aging and loss, and is a haunting and extremely original novel. In the words of the (London) Times Literary Supplement, “it is vivid in its denunciation of destructive forces and in its evocation of what is at stake.”

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[Urgresic] must be numbered among what Jacques Maritain called the dreamers of the true; she draws us into the dream.

Richard Eder, New York Times
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