Slavenka Drakulic – författare

Europe is still a divided continent. In the place of a fallen Berlin wall, there is a chasm between the East and the West. Are these differences a communist legacy, or do they run even deeper? What divides us today? To say simply that it is the understanding of the past, or a different concept of time, is not enough. But a visitor to this part of the world will soon discover that we, the Eastern Europeans, live in another time zone. We live in the twentieth century, but at the same time we inhabit a past full of myths and fairy tales, of blood and national belonging, and the fact that most people are lying and cheating or that they have the habit of blaming others for every failure...'An intimate tour of life on the streets of Budapest, Tirana, Warsaw and Zagreb, as those cities continue to acclimatise to the post-Communist thaw, Café Europa does not provide easy solutions or furnish political pallatives. Rather as a Croatian with a viewpoint of ever-widening relevance, the value of Slavenka Drakulic's wry and humane observations lie in the emotional force of their honesty and the clarity of their insight.....

Slavenka Drakulic attended the Serbian war crimes trial in the Hague. This important book is about how ordinary people commit terrible crimes in wartime. With extraordinary story-telling skill Drakulic draws us in to this difficult subject. We cannot turn away from her subject matter because her writing is so engaging, lively and compelling. From the monstrous Slobodan Milosevich and his evil Lady Macbeth of a wife to humble Serb soldiers who claim they were 'just obeying orders', Drakulic brilliantly enters the minds of the killers. There are also great stories of bravery and survival, both from those who helped Bosnians escape from the Serbs and from those who risked their lives to help them.

Nya texter från Europa om Europa. Om imperiedrömmarnas återkomst, om Gayropas förmodade fall, bulgarisk feed-backdemokrati, slovensk kolonialism, den ukrainska hbt-rörelsen efter Euromajdan, den kroatiska kvinnorörelsen efter kommunismen, den riktige ryske mannen, den belarusiska konstens plats, det jugoslaviska Atlantis och hotet att bli turk. Och om att ockupera Venedig, annektera Wien och semestra på Krim.

I Gläntas hemsökta nummer skriver Maria Stepanova om det förändrade politiska landskapet efter 2014 och ett Ryssland som hemsöks av Sovjet. Slavenka Drakulic ser bilder från kriget i forna Jugoslavien gå igen i rapporteringen från Butja. Ilya Kaminsky söker efter ett förlorat Odessa. Sara Stridsberg iscensätter en sårad ängel. Merima Dizdarevic lanserar begreppet inat. Balsam Karams text förvaltar de exceptionella katastrofernas följder. Bertolt Brecht klipper och klistrar krigsbilder och Michael Azar lever sig in i alla våra olevda liv. Och mycket mer.