Dubravka Ugresic – författare

‘A writer to cherish’ Susan Sontag‘The story of a shattered life can only be told in bits and pieces’A pink cigarette lighter, lollipop sticks, a beer-bottle opener: these are some of the contents of Roland the Walrus’s stomach, displayed in the Berlin Zoo. As our narrator wanders the city, she recalls the objects and memories, dreams and reflections that make up her life – a photo album, a recipe, a fleeting love affair – as they connect to reveal the fractured reality of being an exile. Written in the aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender is a quietly profound, absurdly humorous meditation on displacement, yearning and the weight of the past.

Baba Yaga is an old hag who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. She is one of the most pervasive and powerful creatures in all mythology. She appears in many forms: as Pupa, a tricksy, cantankerous old woman who keeps her legs tucked into a huge furry boot; as a trio of mischievous elderly women who embark on the trip of a lifetime to a hotel spa; and as a villainous flock of ravens, black hens and magpies infected with the H5N1 virus. But what story does Baba Yaga have to tell us today? This is a quizzical tale about one of the most pervasive and poerful creatures in all mythology, and an extraordinary yarn of identity, secrets, storytelling and love.

Literary Activism – activism that revisits and interrogates an idea of literature – emerges from a radically altered landscape for both publishing and academia, where market pressures are effecting changes – on language, on the measuring of value, on the concept of influence – we might struggle to recognise.Taking in the roles of writer, critic, translator, academic and publisher, the essays in this volume follow no single line of enquiry. Rather, they offer the beginnings of an analysis of the literary world at a certain moment of globalization, while also questioning whether a literary world exists and, if it does, where its boundaries lie.The collection moves in many directions – from Arun Kolatkar and his near-heroic refusal of both market place and reputation; to Derek Attridge, who argues for a form of affirmative criticism which positions the critic as a ‘lover of the text’; while, from Amsterdam, Dubravka Ugrešić;reflects on life in a literary ‘out of nation zone’, adrift in a territory where intellectual protest has been stripped of ideological impetus and subsumed by the voraciousness of the market.Taken together, these essays initiate a series of conversations about who reads what and why, about the practice of writing and criticism at this particular contemporary moment, and about the activities and institutions that shape an understanding of what literature is and what it can do.Literary Activism, edited by Amit Chaudhuri, features writing from Derek Attridge, Tim Parks, Dubravka Ugrešić, Laetitia Zecchini, Peter D. Macdonald, Saikat Majumdar, Jamie McKendrick, and Swapan Chakravorty, with an afterword byJon Cook.