Items related to The Museum of Unconditional Surrender
Synopsis
This is a deeply East European novel in flavour reminiscent of Kundera and Borges. Through weaving together fragments, stories, and diaries Dubravka Ugresic, a prize-winning novelist in the former Yugoslavia, captures the world of a group of characters living in Berlin and Lisbon. Ugresic convincingly brings to life a world and characters preoccupied by questions of exile, nationalism, angels, parables, the Berlin zoo, the layers of meaning in one's past and future frozen by the camera. Underpinned by a calm note of tragedy. The Museum of Unconditional Surrender is a beautifully written novel, both bitter and funny in tone.
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About the Author
Dubravka Ugresic is the author of several works of fiction, including The Museum of Unconditional Surrender and Fording the Stream of Consciousness, and three collections of essays, Have a Nice Day, The Culture of Lies, and most recently Thank You for Not Reading. She has received several international prizes for her writing, including the Swiss Charles Veillon European Essay Prize, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and most recently the Premio Feronio-Citta di Fiano. Born and raised in the former Yugoslavia, she left her homeland in 1993 for political reasons and currently lives in Amsterdam.
From Publishers Weekly
This unconventional novel by Croatian writer Ugresic is a collection of fragmentsAshort essays, journal entries, stories, factual items, descriptions of placeAthat combine to evoke the distinct "point of pain" experienced by a political exile. The book is divided into seven parts, four taking place in present-day Berlin, the unnamed Yugoslavian narrator's place of "temporary exile." The Berlin pieces consist of numbered sections, some only a few lines or a paragraph, which convey city facts ("Under the grassy surface of the hill pulsate 26 million cubic metres of rubble from the ruins of Berlin, collected and dragged here after the Second World War"); thoughts about exile; quotations about Berlin, exile and art; and descriptions of friends, many of whom are themselves artists whose works reflect themes of fragmentation and attempts to reclaim lost or scattered memories. Another series of fragments consists of six stories, some set in America, loosely connected by themes of rootlessness, memory, disorientation. "Part Six" of the novel is a tale about seven women friends in Zagreb who encounter a prophetic angel shortly before "the local apocalypse"; the angel allows only the narrator to remember the occasion and give testimony. Recurring images and themesAthe photo album or the museum, for instanceAdraw together the "bits and pieces," while the domestic detailsAmeals, meetings, shopping expeditionsAkeep the work anchored firmly in the realm of day-to-day existence. Complex, intelligent and challenging, this unusual novel is rendered impressively accessible by Ugresic's human, vulnerable voice. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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- PublisherNew Directions
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 0811214214
- ISBN 13 9780811214216
- BindingHardcover
- LanguageEnglish
- Number of pages238
- Rating
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The Museum of Unconditional Surrender
Published by
Norton & Company Limited, W. W., 1999
ISBN 10: 0811214214
ISBN 13: 9780811214216
Used
Hardcover
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The Museum of Unconditional Surrender
Published by
New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1999
ISBN 10: 0811214214
ISBN 13: 9780811214216
Used
Hardcover
Seller: ThriftBooks-Atlanta, AUSTELL, GA, U.S.A.
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Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.65. Seller Inventory # G0811214214I4N00
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The Museum of Unconditional Surrender
Published by
New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1999
ISBN 10: 0811214214
ISBN 13: 9780811214216
Used
Hardcover
Seller: ThriftBooks-Atlanta, AUSTELL, GA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Fair. No Jacket. Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.65. Seller Inventory # G0811214214I5N00
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The Museum of Unconditional Surrender
Published by
New Directions, 1999
ISBN 10: 0811214214
ISBN 13: 9780811214216
Used
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First Edition
Seller: zenosbooks, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 4 out of 5 stars
hardcover. Condition: Very Good in Dustjacket. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. New York. 1999. New Directions. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0811214214. Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth. 238 pages. hardcover. keywords: Europe Croatia Yugoslavia Literature Women Translated World Literature. DESCRIPTION - The Museum of Unconditional Surrender - by the renowned Yugoslavian writer Dubravka Ugresic - 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. Some chapters are written in compact and beautiful prose fragments. Another chapter re-creates the daily journal of the narrator's lonely and alienated mother, who shops at the improvised flea-markets in town and longs for her children; another is a dream-like narrative in which the narrator's circle of women friends are visited by an angel. There are reflections and accounts of the Holocaust and the Yugoslav Civil War; portraits of European artists; a recipe for Caraway Soup; a moving story of a romantic encounter in Lisbon; descriptions of family photographs; memories of the small town in which the narrator was raised, in which she remembers the Gypsies living opposite the railroad tracks and the magnificent local seamstress (who 'seemed to have grown into her Singer sewing machine'). Addressing the themes of art and history, aging and loss, The Museum is a haunting and an 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.' inventory #27222. Seller Inventory # z27222
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