The Culture of Lies
Published on 16. April 2024
226 pages
978-1-948830-91-1 (ISBN)
Description
The Culture of Lies is one of the most intelligent and lucid accounts of an appalling episode in history. It shows us the banality and brutality of nationalism and the way that nationalistic ideology permeates every pore of life. Ugre?ic's acerbic and penetrating essays cover everything from politics to daily routine, from public to private life.With a diverse and unusual perspective, she writes about memory, soap operas, the destruction of everyday life, kitsch, the conformity of intellectuals, propaganda and censorship, the strategies of human manipulation and the walls of Europe which, she argues, never really did fall.
Shot through with irony and sadness, satirical protest and bitter melancholy, The Culture of Lies is a gesture of intellectual resistance by a writer branded "a traitor" and "a witch" in Croatia.
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Dubravka Ugresic is the author of six works of fiction, including The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, and six essay collections, including the NBCC award finalist, Karaoke Culture. She went into exile from Croatia after being labeled a "witch" for her anti-nationalistic stance during the Yugoslav war. She now resides in the Netherlands. In 2016, she was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature for her body of work.
Celia Hawkesworth is the translator of numerous works of Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian literature, including Dubravka Ugresic's The Culture of Lies for which she won the Heldt Prize for Translation in 1999. She also received the Best Translated Book Award for her translation of EEG by Da?a Drndic.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- I - Dark Beginning
- II - The Palindrome Conspiracy
- My First Primer
- The Palindrome Story
- Priests and Parrots
- III - Sweet Strategies
- Gingerbread Heart Culture
- The Realization of a Metaphor
- The Culture of Lies
- Good Night, Croatian Writers, Wherever You May Be
- IV - Conversations, or Repairing the Tap in Three Episodes
- V - Culture and Gunpowder
- Because We're Just Boys
- Balkan Blues
- The Tale of the Bomb and the Book
- Profession: Intellectual
- VI - Footnotes
- VII - In Ruins
- Life as a Soap Opera
- The Confiscation of Memory
- Nice People Don't Mention Such Things
- VIII - Souvenirs from Paradise
- Glossary
- Note
- Afterword
- About the Author
