Publisher: Durieux

PALE. Diary from April 5 to July 15, 1992

PALE. Dnevnik 5.4. - 15.7.1992

Author(s): Mladen Vuksanović / Language(s): Croatian

Set at the outbreak of the war in Bosnia, this diary records the extraordinary unfolding of events. The author lived in the ski resort of Pale, 15km above Sarajevo. In April 1992, when Radovan Karadžić launches his savage assault on the city. Vuksanović - refusing to collaborate - becomes a prisoner in his own home, cut off from his children and friends below. He expressed his terror and disgust within these pages. During that time, he describes in chilling detail not only the horrifying war - with the looting, ethnic cleansing and betrayal that became commonplace - but also the mental strain of war on the individual. He and his wife finally managed to escape in a UN refugee bus via Hungary to Croatia, smuggling with them these notes from enemy territory.<br>About the Author: Mladen Vuksanović was born in Pale in 1942, to a Bosnian Croat mother and a Bosnian Serb father. An award-winning screenwriter and editor for Sarajevo TV before the war, Vuksanović published this book in Zagreb in 1996. He died nin 1999; his novel, Taksi za Jahoriu (Taxi to Jahorina), was published posthumously in 2000.

Critiques, Forewords, Conversations, 1962 — 2011

Kritike, predgovori, razgovori, 1962. — 2011.

Author(s): Želimir Koščević / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: Croatian Arts; Antun Motika; Ivana Tomljenović Meller; Oscar Schlemmer; Frida Kahlo; Konstantin Čiurlionis; Ivan Kožarić; James Ensor; Claude Monet; Sebastião Salgado; Jimmie Durham;

The activity of Želimir Koščević started at the beginning of ’60s, while he was still studying the History of Art at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. At the time, the Yugoslav society was, in the sphere of visual arts, firmly oriented towards progressive creative concepts. Croatia and Zagreb were the home of one of the liveliest art scenes in Europe. Koščević personally contributed to the scene as a curator of the Student Centre Gallery in the most important period of its activity, from 1966 to 1979. <br>There he promoted artistic practices and artists who would essentially mark the national and global art during the next period and inaugurated the curator practice that would become a norm in the sphere of contemporary art presentation. Although Koščević had a high level of theoretical knowledge, the incessant, active curator work and experience of managing the gallery, as well as the direct interaction with artists and audience, provided practical insights for his critical estimations of exhibitions and art phenomena.

Two homes. Croatian labor migration to Germany as a transnational phenomenon

Dva doma. Hrvatska radna migracija u Njemačku kao transnacionalni fenomen

Author(s): Jasna Čapo / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: Immigration; identity; transnationalism; diaspora; guest-worker; Croatian emigration;

Der vorliegende Band analysiert Umstände und Folgen der kroatischen Arbeitsmigration nach Westdeutschland in den 60er und 70er Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts. Bekannt unter dem Begriff Gastarbeitermigration wurde diese Wanderung in der ersten Zeit als vorläufige Beschäftigung der vornehmlich jüngeren männlichen Population mit niedriger Berufsqualifikation realisiert, in der Folge entwickelte sie sich aber zu einem längerfristigen Verbleib sowie Nachzug ganzer Familien nach Deutschland. Das Buch enthält Kapitel über Migranten und ihre Nachkommen, die sogenannte transnationale Generation in Deutschland. Die Grundlage für das Buch lieferten die mit Kroaten in Deutschland geführten Gespräche in der Zeitspanne von 2002 bis 2017. Dabei werden Schlüsselthemen und Metaphern erörtert, die aus dem Leben der Kroaten im Aufnahmeland (damaliges Westdeutschland) und dem Herkunftsland (damaliges Jugoslawien, heute Kroatien und Bosnien und Herzegowina) entspringen, aber auch jene, die sich aus dem transnationalen sozialen, jenseits der staatlichen Grenzen geschaffenen Raum herleiten.

Bicentennial of Friedrich Engels

200 godina Friedricha Engelsa

Author(s): / Language(s): Croatian,Serbian

Keywords: Friedrich Engels; Karl Marx; working class; precariat; neoliberalism; political economy; housing and living conditions; Marxism; scientific utopian socialism; revolution; Capitalism; peasantry; religion; Christianity; family; private property;

This anthology book is published on the occasion of the bicentennial of the birth of Friedrich Engels, an exceptional thinker and theorist of the revolution. Editors Maroje Višić and Miroslav Artić gathered renowned domestic and international scientists who tried to reevaluate Engels' works and his scientific contribution. The idea behind the book is to point out the everlasting value and significance of Engels’ revolutionary philosophy. Contributing authors offered analytical reading of Engels' ideas, addressing pressing issues in economics, politics, religion, feminism, ideology and in other segments of contemporary society. The papers in an anthology are organized under the chapters: The Reception of Engel’s Philosophy, Actuality of Engels Today with subchapters on working-class and precariat, peasantry as the subject of change, early Christianity as an inspiration; and the last chapter is Revalorization of Family and State. The first chapter tackles the questions if Engels was more than an interpreter of Marx or simply the first Marxist who contributed to the banalization of Marx. It then investigates reception of Engels’ philosophy in ex-Yugoslavia specifically and in philosophical theory in general. The second chapter demonstrates actuality and relevance of Engels today by discussing the topics of working-class and precariat, by making comparison between early industrial society and contemporary society and by tracking development of socialism from utopia to a science. Chapter also deals on the peasantry whose role as a subject of change is thoroughly problematized. Special part of the chapter is dedicated to the influence of the practice of early Christianity on the formation of Engels’ revolutionary idea and to what extent original Christian community served affected the development of Engels’ thought. Final chapter brings papers that, under new circumstances, re-examine the understanding of the state-family relation and their dynamic. This comprehensive anthology attempted to revalorize and appraise Engels’ own contribution to science and philosophy 200 years after his birth. For this it was necessary to “divorce” Engels from Marx so that the fallacy of statement that Engels was second violin to Marx becomes striking.Chapter one tackle the question of whetherEngels was more than an interpreter of Marx or simply the first Marxist to contribute to the banalization of Marx.= Engels' reception is then examined both in the former Yugoslavia and in philosophical theory in general.Special part of the chapter is dedicated to influence of the practice of early Christianity on the formation of Engels’ revolutionary idea. That is, to what extent the examples of the original Christian communities influenced the development of Engels' thought

The Topoi of Performance Art: A Local Perspective

Topoi umjetnosti performansa: lokalna vizura

Author(s): Suzana Marjanić / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: performance art; Croatia; personal mythologies; criticism of political ethno/myths; artivism;

The book The Topoi of Performance Art: A Local Perspective (Durieux, HS AICA, 2017) by Suzana Marjanić is a follow-up on the research of performance art from a local perspective, which I sought to integrate in the book The Chronotope of Croatian Performance Art: From Traveleri until Today (Bijeli val Association, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Školska knjiga, 2014), structured as the first review of the history of performance art in Croatia focusing on the performative energies of individual centres (e.g. Zagreb, Varaždin, Osijek, Dubrovnik, Split, Rijeka, Labin, Pula). By changing the chronotopic perspective to that of motif and subject, in the book The Topoi of Performance Art: A Local Perspective I seek to explore performance art within the framework of its dominant topoi ranging from personal (personal mythologies) to political (criticism of political ethno/myths). While relying on the very political dimension, as the motto of the book I have chosen the statement of Igor Grubić on the occasion of his anonymous individual action Black Peristyle (held in the night between January 10 and 11, 1998), which was the first action and provocation supported by Croatia’s civic initiative of the 1990s and an action of exceptional civic courage. (author) “The edition you are holding in your hands is a different book in terms of content and organisation – many of the texts it contains were written and published following the finalisation of the Chronotope, and focus on specific subjects present in performance art or regard the performance works in relation to other genres and contexts outside or on the margins of that which we conventionally label with the term visual art. The author sovereignly tackles the analysis of the intertwining of performance art and experimental and pop music, performing arts, feminist and environmental activism, struggle for animal and human rights, as well as phenomena such as terrorism, refugee crisis, and other key political and social issues of our time.” (Marko Golub, editor)

Population II

Populacija II

Author(s): Goran Bogunović / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: hybrid genre; essays; stories; posthumanism, music; humour;

Populacija II is a collection of hybrid prose pieces. The pieces are a mix of essays, short stores and autobiographical narratives that the author Goran Bogunović merges to write about ordinary events juxtaposing them to eccentric and peculiar ideas. The resulting products are beautifully witty and insightful stories about musical concerts, writing, and posthumanist sentiments. The narration is laid back, full of humorous details, and apparently unimportant observations that are actually an invitation to a deeper questioning of the nature of things. In his investigations of the strange side of the everyday, he is led by Ry Cooder and Kraftwerk, Sebald and Perec, Captain Beefheart and Kruno Levačić. The implicit message that shapes on the edges of the texts is that man is not the measure of all things, and that the world would go on without him. Various cheerful and wistful forms of the posthumanist sentiment permeate these story-essays that range from simpler and comical to more complex and serious, ending with the beautyful and poetical, eponymous »Population II«. Goran Bogunović was born in 1972, in Zagreb. He graduated from the Faculty of Electronical Engineering and Computing, and from the Faculty of Economics and Business. His literary works have been published in Croatian and foreign journals and magazines, and on the radio. He published collections of poetry Here (Matica hrvatska Karlovac, Karlovac 2002), The Area of High Cloudiness (Naklada Mlinarec — Plavić, Zagreb, 2004), and Things Are Getting More Distant (Edicija Pesničenje, Beograd 2013). He also published short story collections Everything Will Be All Right (Naklada Minarec — Plavić, 2003), and Sloths and Other Stories (Kornet, Beograd, 2007). His poems and stories have been translated into various languages. He played guitar in several bands (Tobić Tobić idol mladih, U pol 9 kod Sabe etc.). He is a producer of several bands. Currently, he plays in the band Radost!

Līlā

Līlā

Author(s): Iva Gjurkin / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: novel; coming of age; Bildungsroman; indian philosophy; Buddhism.

The translator and Indologist Iva Gjurkin wrote a novel Līlā, a story about the growing up of two friends. Gjurkin deftly meanders through their childhood and adolescence, touching upon the important points of maturing in order to speak about finding one's inner peace and content with one's self, through the Indian philosophy of play. The narration is steady and meticulous, without a lack or surplus. It is immersed in the social context of the late 20th century, and still focused on the important matter, with language sharp and precise. Gjurkin's novel is impeccably rounded, permeated by rich and deep Indian philosophy, with the relation of the absolute and the individual, so important for this novel, made available even to less curious readers. Iva Gjurkin graduated in Indian Languages and Literature, and Hungarian Language and Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. She published essays and literary works in the magazines Scopus, Književna smotra, and Fantom slobode. She translated theroetical and literary tekst for the magazine Libra libera, and the books The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature by Franco Moretti (2015), What is Iconoclah?, From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik – or How to Make Things Public, and Reset Modernity! by Bruno Latour (2017), and Pamphlets of the Stanford Literary Lab, by Franco Moretti et al. (2018).

Gender and the Balkans

Rod i Balkan

Author(s): Marina Matešić,Svetlana Slapšak / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: gender studies; travelogue; protofeminism; Balkans; gender; gendering; mobility; hospitality;

Marina Matešić's and Svetlana Slapšak's book Gender and Balkans incorporates two studies on gendering of Balkanism, i.e, on the gendered reading of Balkanism. In the forst part, the authors write about the historical practice of presenting the Balkans by male travelers only to contrast them with the travelogues by women authors of the 18th and 19th centuries, who broke down patriarchal representations of the Balkans. Analysing travelogues by Mary Wortley Montagu, Emily Strangford, Dora d’Istria, Jelena Dimitrijević, Maria Karlova, Paulina Irby and Georgina Mackenzie, Matešić and Slapšak infer that their protofeminist role frequently went hand in hand with their imperialist tendencies. The second study is about the gender situation in the 20th century Balkans. It questions the concept of gender, its appropriation for various arbitrary theses, and its subsequent contamination. The authors also indicate that the notion of mobility is politically marked. Svetlana Slapšak was born in 1948, in Belgrade, where she graduated in classical philology at the Faculty of Philology. Her PhD thesis was on the Vuk Karadžić's dictionary and calcs from Greek language. Slapšak worked at the Institute for Literature and Arts in Belgrade, and from 1986, she has been a professor at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. She has published more than 50 books, and 400 scientific papers in anthropology, gender studies, Balkanology, and feminist criticism. She translated numerous books from latin, old Greek, French and English into Serbian language. For her work she was awarded several literary and peace awards. Marina Matešić was born in Split. She graduated in philosophy, literature and gender studies, and obtained her PhD with the thesis on gender anthropology at the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis in Ljubljana. She won scholarships as a guest researcher at the Duke University in the USA, and the Humboldt–Universität in Berlin. Her areas of interest are the construction of gender and sexuality, cultural identities and migrations, feminism, Balkanology and postcolonialist criticism.

Hero or Monster

Junak ili Čudovište

Author(s): Mirta Maslać / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: novel; pseudo-autobiography; trauma; psychiatry; black humour;

Junak ili čudovište, a novel by Mirta Maslać, is autobiographical in tone, but any stricter categorising would exclude an entire range of its completely heterogeneous elements. This is a diary of an illness and rehabilitation that functions also as a book about pop-culture and art, and about the way that motifs and narratives of the literary avant-garde, rock, and TV series shape our subjectivity. The novel that, besides familiar genre places, offers a merciless insight into the body as the uncanny locus of trauma, presenting the self-destruction without any romanticising. Despite the subdued black humour that colours this whole story, somebody will probably read it as a confession or testimony, a narrative shaping of one's own life in the perspective of existential crisis, maybe even death. But here, the struggle for authenticity is somewhere else, beyond the questions of truthfulness. Hero or Monster shows how, using a certain cultural repertoire, the self can »theatricalise« itself to itself, not for the sake of spectacle, but for the sake of self-reflection. That is the reason this novel is about a peculiar »taming of a monster«: a hard-laboured procedure of discursive creation of something that until now looked only as an unspeakable, unthinkable quantity, trauma generator, and pure danger. This taming is done by writing. Mirta Maslać was born in 1993, in Zagreb. She graduated in comparative literature and Croatian language and literature from the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. She published a theoretical study on the vocabulary in drag practices, and the novel Hero or Monster.

The Age of Violence, The Age of Fear: Soldiers-looters, peasant-robbers and settlers-thugs in Istria of the XVII. and XVIII. century

Doba nasilja, doba straha: Vojnici-pljačkaši, seljaci-razbojnici i doseljenici-nasilnici u Istri XVII. i XVIII. stoljeća

Author(s): Miroslav Bertoša / Language(s): Croatian

The first part of the book shows the Uskok war (1615-1618), which was only seemingly a short historical bang. It was in fact an event whose consequences in the economic sphere were felt for decades, and in the mental structures of the consciousness of future generations - for centuries, even until today. Based on archival sources and published literature, the author shows how those tragic historical events between the 16th and 17th centuries left a deep and indestructible mark on the mentality of the Istrian man, a time when Croatian Venetian subjects (Benečani) and Croatian subjects of the Austrian Archduke (Kraljevci) identified with the feudal banners of their masters and under them attacked people of the same class and ethnicity. The second part deals with the world of the marginal - those people who have been disenfranchised by the European Ancien Régime and pushed to the margins of society. This world, once silenced, has become, at least in modern social historiography, one of the central contents of the study of the past. Bundles of court documents, which until recently the historian did not consider essential for interpreting the historical development of a society, became indispensable in the analysis of its structures. The "archives of silence" spoke about those marginalised who had been deprived of the right to speak by previous societies and their ideologized historiographies. A cruel world in which people become exiles and villains, where cruelty is born and where blood causes blood. The third part of this book, as far as the archival material allows, presents a meticulous reconstruction of the events related to the arrival of hajduk settlers in the Pula region and an analysis of the cause-and-effect relations that led to this events. Hajduk migration and the problems it caused are observed within the then historical situation in Istria, so some issues presented are not as closely related to the colonization of Hajduk, but directly or indirectly affected it. Miroslav Bertoša (1938) is a historian and long-term scientific advisor at the Institute of Historical and Social Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU), now a professor at the University of Juraj Dobrila in Pula. First Consul General of the Republic of Croatia in Trieste (1995-1998). Associate member of HAZU. He began publishing essays, articles and critiques in 1954, and since 1963 he has been researching modern Istrian history and Istrian anti-fascism, as well social, political, demographic and ethnic components of the Venetian part of Istria and the northern Adriatic area from the 16th to the 18th century. He is a connoisseur of contemporary historiography, and especially of movements in the avant-garde French Annales school. Alongside Robert Matijašić he was coeditor of the Istrian Encyclopedia (2005).

Istria, Adriatic, Mediterranean: Identities and Imaginaries

Istra, Jadran, Sredozemlje: Identiteti i imaginariji

Author(s): Miroslav Bertoša / Language(s): Croatian

Feuilletons, on this occasion arranged in several units, which the author published in the period from 1991 to 2002 in the Pula daily "Glas Istre". These feuilletons are a kind of reflection on the current - primarily Istrian - political everyday life, in which the author, looking at the world from the perspective of a historian, connects the present and the past. Or, as Bertoša himself describes them, they are: "improvised imaginations and fabrications of reality in confrontation with history, its facts and its interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary context."

Black Lymph/Green Heart: The Alternative Lexicon of Soul

Crna limfa/zeleno srce: alternativni leksikon duše

Author(s): Željka Matijašević / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: lexicon; glossary; irony; psychoanalysis; narcissism; psychopathology;

Black Lymph/Green Heart: The Alternative Lexicon of Soul is a glossary of terms which the author deemed significant for today's collective and individual psychic condition. The selected entries have their definitions as in ordinary lexicons. However, the alternative lexicon selects the terms differently, and uses a different methodology of their treatment. In this lexicon, you will find apparently arbitrarily selected entries with inconsistently written definitions. But it is precisely with that subjective and ironic approach that the author reveals the characteristics of the listed concepts, which are important in some not-so-rare situations. The ones that concern our psychological welfare. This unscientific book, that parodies the scientific structure of a lexicon as such, reveals the functioning of narcissists, egomaniacs, psychopaths and sociopaths who have become a norm, instead of an exception. If you want to know what melancholy and femmes fatales have in common, or what is the nature of a relationship between pathocracy and a tram, The Alternative Lexicon of Soul will give you the answers and make you laugh at the same time. Željka Matijašević was born in 1968, in Zagreb. She graduated in Comparative Literature, and French Language and Literature at the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. She obtained her doctor's degree at the Trinity College of the Cambridge University. She is a full-professor at the Department of the Comparative Literature at the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her main interests are psychoanalytic theory and applied psychoanalysis. She is an author of six scientific books: Lacan: ustrajnost dijalektike (2005), Strukturiranje nesvjesnog: Freud i Lacan (2006), Uvod u psihoanalizu: Edip, Hamlet, Jekyll/Hyde (2011), Stoljeće krhkog sebstva: psihoanaliza, društvo, kultura (2016), Drama, drama (2020), and The Borderline Culture (2021). She also authored one novel, Defences with the Taste of Death (2019), and a lexicon Black Lymph/Green Heart: The Alternative Lexicon of Soul (2017). She is a member of La Fondation Européenne pour la Psychanalyse and the Croatian Writers Society.

Fists Full of Clouds and Other Plays

Šake pune oblaka i druge drame

Author(s): Lejla Kalamujić / Language(s): Bosnian

Keywords: Yugoslavia; war; lesbian;transgender; stigma, trauma;

Lejla Kalamujić has won our hearts with her excellent short story collection Call Me Esteban, and with this collection of plays she will keep us under the same strong impression. Fists Full of Clouds and Other Plays include the eponymous play, Let’s Turn off the Light, and She-Cannibal, which has been successfully staged in the Balkans. The plays are related by tackling the contemporary social problems: the stigma of homosexual and transgender people, loneliness of the elderly, and growing up without parents. Cutting deeply into the tissue of society, Kalamujić reveals also the destructive effects of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, whose citizens afterwards lost their sense of belonging. The author approaches her characters with warmth and empathy, offering them the possibility of a different, better future. To the deviations of humaneness Kalamujić responds with hope. Lejla Kalamujić was born in 1980 in Sarajevo, where she graduated in philosophy and sociology. She published two short story collections, Anatomy of a Smile (2008.), and Call Me Esteban (2015). For the latter she won the “Edo Budiša” Award. She was shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature in 2016. She also won numerous short story awards.

Breakfast for Bitch

Doručak za Bič

Author(s): Mario Brkljačić / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: working-class; fishing; drinking; realism; irony;

The short story collection Breakfast for Bitch tackles the lives of working-class men who drink, swear and talk in slang, sometimes showing their tender side. It is a ground for both bizarre events, such as swallowing one's dental prosthesis, and the ordinary routine made up of ironing clothes. The stories contain mostly the same characters living the same daily routine that becomes immanent to working-class people who cannot climb up on the social ladder. Whatever the matter, the stories are always witty, told with subdued humour and irony. Life and emotions of those from the margins, the underprivileged and insignificant, swell here, among the glasses of wine and beer. Mario Brkljačić was born in 1966 in Zagreb. He has published poetry and fiction in the magazines Godine nove, Libra Libera, Quorum, Republika, Treći trg, Vijenac and Zarez. With his collection of poems Look Me in the Eyes (2004) he was the winner of the Students Centre competition for the first book. He published books He Never Danced Pogo (2004), A Fly in the Soup (2005), and I Can't Look at Him Like That (2006). Brkljačić's name has become a synonym for the Croatian underground literature that tells the story of working-class people.

Diary from the City of P.

Dnevnik iz grada P.

Author(s): Nenad Popović / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: Year 2013; The Balkans; Schengen; poverty; Pula; City of Pula; Kajkavian dialect;

At the first sight, this book is a compilation of notes on private, political and social matters. However, it is far more than just that. The essays in the Diary form the City of P. tackle the signals of state poverty or, rather, state power that is barely noticed in Croatia; the books read only by a few in Croatia, the nearly unreal facts that are strange to almost nobody in Croatia. What does a microcosmos of a garbage bottles gatherer really look like? Where do the new highways lead to as they descend to the borders of Schengen Area, towards the unfortunate regions of the Balkans? How does a simple building demask the whole history of a former Austro-Hungarian war port? Finally, how did the Kajkavian dialect end up in the gutter, as a social caricature, during the language wars of the last 150 years? This diary, whose geographical determinant (a city by the sea), and a historical moment (the year of Croatia’s entrance into the EU) are a necessary context, is in fact unconventional anatomy of the reality that flows, thorough and encompassing at the same time. Publisher, translator, and writer Nenad Popović was born in Zagreb in 1950. He attended colleges in Zagreb and Bonn, and Freiburg with the scholarship Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. He graduated in German Language and Literature and South Slavic Languages and Literature from the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. In 1980. he became an editor, and afterwards the head editor of the publishing house Graphical Institute of Croatia. In 1990. he co-founded the publishing house Durieux, one of the first independent private publishing houses in Croatia, where he worked as the head editor until 2013. In 1999. he participated in founding of the literary Group 99. In 2002 he became one of founders of the Croatian Writers’ Society, becoming its vice-president afterwards. Since 1978, he has occasionally written for newspapers, magazines and radio, and since 1985 for the media of German speaking countries (Manuskripte, Literatur und Kritik, Kulturaustausch, Frankfurter Rundschau, Die Zeit, Weltwoche, et al.). For theatre he translated such authors as Sternheim, Bruckner, Bernhard, Fassbinder among others. He also translated books by Erwin Piscator, Kazimir Malevič, Boris Kelemen, Benn Meyer-Wehlack, Tilla Durieux and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. During Bosnian wars, he translated articles by Bosnian writers (Karahasan, Lovrenović, Filipović, Jergović) for German newspapers and magazines. He published books A World in Shadow (2008), A Treatise on Population (2014), Diary from the City of P. (2017), and Living with Them (2021). For his work he received many awards and accolades: Premio '92 per il lavoro letterario from the Italian Cultural Institute in Zagreb (1992), The Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding (1999), and, with Freimut Duve, Bruno Kreisky Award (1999). He was also awarded the Hermann Kesten Medal by the German PEN Centre in 2000. The same year he became an honorary citizen of Sarajevo. He is a member of the following organisations: Croatian PEN Centre, Cap Anamur - German Emergency Doctors, Cologne; Journalisten helfen Journalisten, München; International Forum Bosnia, Sarajevo; Association of Literary Translators of Croatia. He lives in Pula.

Living with Them

Život s njima

Author(s): Nenad Popović / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: Yugonostalgia; late communism; mass culture; early Croatian state; fundamentalism;

A book of essays Living with Them is the anatomy of the last Yugoslav decade, and the first three decades of Croatian reality. As an autonomous observer, and an analyst of cultural and ideological patterns, Nenad Popović creates a sketch for the typology of Croatian intellectuals, artists and politicians’ public personae. He creates sketches of mindsets that harbour religious fundamentalism, Yugonostalgia, or partake in the phenomena of mass culture. As in his previous books and public interventions, Popović is a pessimistic chronicler of his time, and his essays are qualified testimonies of a disjointed, crazy time in which Croatia and Europe are looking for themselves - spiritually, politically and economically. This book is a kind of Popović’s “private encyclopaedia” of Croatia. Although the author sees only caricatures and dramas of the big Croatian self-deception and its continuous blindness, from the late communism until this day, we can still discern his invitation to take a mirror in our hands. Publisher, translator, and writer Nenad Popović was born in Zagreb in 1950. He attended colleges in Zagreb and Bonn, and Freiburg with the scholarship Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. He graduated in German Language and Literature and South Slavic Languages and Literature from the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. In 1980. he became an editor, and afterwards the head editor of the publishing house Graphical Institute of Croatia. In 1990. he co-founded the publishing house Durieux, one of the first independent private publishing houses in Croatia, where he worked as the head editor until 2013. In 1999. he participated in founding of the literary Group 99. In 2002 he became one of founders of the Croatian Writers’ Society, becoming its vice-president afterwards. Since 1978, he has occasionally written for newspapers, magazines and radio, and since 1985 for the media of German speaking countries (Manuskripte, Literatur und Kritik, Kulturaustausch, Frankfurter Rundschau, Die Zeit, Weltwoche, et al.). For theatre he translated such authors as Sternheim, Bruckner, Bernhard, Fassbinder among others. He also translated books by Erwin Piscator, Kazimir Malevič, Boris Kelemen, Benn Meyer-Wehlack, Tilla Durieux and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. During Bosnian wars, he translated articles by Bosnian writers (Karahasan, Lovrenović, Filipović, Jergović) for German newspapers and magazines. He published books A World in Shadow (2008), A Treatise on Population (2014), Diary from the City of P. (2017), and Living with Them (2021). For his work he received many awards and accolades: Premio '92 per il lavoro letterario from the Italian Cultural Institute in Zagreb (1992), The Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding (1999), and, with Freimut Duve, Bruno Kreisky Award (1999). He was also awarded the Hermann Kesten Medal by the German PEN Centre in 2000. The same year he became an honorary citizen of Sarajevo. He is a member of the following organisations: Croatian PEN Centre, Cap Anamur - German Emergency Doctors, Cologne; Journalisten helfen Journalisten, München; International Forum Bosnia, Sarajevo; Association of Literary Translators of Croatia. He lives in Pula.

Selected Texts

Odabrani tekstovi

Author(s): Nena Dimitrijević,Braco Dimitrijević,Branko Franceschi / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: art; conceptual art; Zagreb conceptual art; art critique; art theory; art philosophy; modern art; contemporary art; abstract art;

The Selected Texts include critiques, essays, and interviews that the art historian Nena Dimitrijević and the artist Braco Dimitrijević have published both in Croatia and foreign countries during their prolific period that has lasted more than forty years. The significance of this book surpasses the effort needed to collect, and translate this bulk of material. Having in mind that the authors’ carriers, whose success is almost a precendent in the Balkans, have been built upon the international art scene, the Croatian readers have not been familiar with most of their textst published in foreign countries. This book will be very useful for those who shape the reality and future of the domestic art context today. It offers testimonies by the creators and participants of the most significant art phenomena from the second half of the 20th century. It also presents a critical and creative model, and criteria for actively influencing the found structure of a cultural system, which the authors of the book have applied in their performance. In the end, the book offers retrospectively a method for the objective viewing and verification of the highly esteemed conceptual art period, especially the art of the Zagreb circle, with both of them being its valued protagonists. Nena and Braco Dimitrijević are an unusually well-balanced creative couple. Nena Dimitrijević’s curating and critical work is renowned because she has consistently promoted, in print, digital media and exhibitions, the radical strategies of the artists of her generation. She has conceptually and linguistically modernised the media of visual arts critique, and the exhibition practice. Braco Dimitrijević has established himself as one of the leading innovators on the contemporary global art scene with his famous artistic actions and projects that reflect his radical attitudes on the fundamental questions about the art creation and its position in society, that is, the relation of an individual and the political power, or an artist and cultural system. Braco Dimitrijević created his status also by his essential separation from the dominating theoretical, historical, cultural and civilisational models. Nena and Braco’s works overlap in their stance that the sense of the artwork is its cognitive and ethical dimensions, which, articulated into an aesthetic form, operate beneficially and constructively inside the artistic, and wider social discourses. Artists, critics, curators, institutions, and collectors have their distinctive roles in their respective missions. Although the Dimitrijevićs are often percieved as a pair of creative people who are directed toward each other, their separate careers, that of a successful artist, and a successful critic, show the development of the same theoretical standpoint in different areas of work.

Swelter

Omara

Author(s): Iva Ušćumlić / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: novel; crime fiction; adultery; missing person; murder; nature of love;

The novel Swelter by Iva Ušćumlić, who has shown her remarkable skills with her first novel Ghosts, provides an atmospheric picture of a hot summer in Zagreb, when a woman goes missing, and of the lives of her family that turn into a nightmare. Although the mystery of the missing woman is in the foreground of the story, we cannot classify this book as a crime fiction only. The crime plot intertwines with the inner life of the protagonists, and with an analysis of one love. The text eventually evolves into a metaphysical questioning of that most important of all feelings: what does it consist of, what triggers it, what ends it. As opposed to many other hybrid texts, this novel has no visible seams where the elements of pulp and highbrow literature meet. The narration glides so easily it is difficult to separate the crime story from the metaphysical questions. It all merges into one homogeneous, compact discourse without fissures. The narrator analeptically plays with the plot and the story, with the “now” and “then”, constructing a story that becomes more interesting, real and familiar with each page. The plot that is wedged into a few hot months actually stretches across thirty years, creating a perfect mosaic. Iva Ušćumlić was born in 1977 in Zagreb. She is an author of the highly praised novels Ghosts (2013) and Swelter (2017). She started her career as a journalist. Today the creates various stories, each adapted to its medium, from copywriting in the marketing industry, essays and books, and socially engaged flash fiction, to notes on social networks. The sharp and witty notes brought her on the prestigious list of the biggest influencers on the Balkans. This multitalented author is a passionate photographer, and her photography is, as her writing, very intimate. Both her writing and photography possess a peculiar style, and sophisticated sense of rhythm. Ušćumlić is known for her ad hoc essays where she reinterprets apparently ordinary everyday scenes in an original way that encourages thinking and discussion.

Archipelago of Contemporary Philosophy

Arhipelag suvremene filozofije

Author(s): Tonči Valentić / Language(s): Croatian

Keywords: contemporary philosophy;critical reviews; modern humanities;

The Archipelago of Contemporary Philosophy consists of collected critical reviews and essays on 52 works by Croatian and European authors that have marked past two decades in philosophy. The book accurately and systematically monitors and critically registers the multiplicity and ramifications of various philosophical directions and intentions of the modern humanities. Tonči Valentić is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Textile Technology, Department of Fashion Design, University of Zagreb, where he teaches courses in Media Theory, Sociology of Culture, Semiotics of Fashion, and Cultural Anthropology. He obtained MA degree in philosophy and literature from Faculty of Humanities in Zagreb, MA degree in sociology and anthropology from CEU in Budapest and PhD in sociology from University of Ljubljana. His books include: Multiple Modernities (2006), Camera Absondita: Essays on Ontology of Photography (2013), Archipelago of Contemporary Philosophy (2018) and Media Construction of Balkanism (2021).