Dubravka Ugrešić

Dubravka Ugrešić was born in Kutina, Croatia, in what was then Yugoslavia. She studied Russian and comparative literature at the University of Zagreb and worked for twenty years at the Institute for Theory of Literature in Zagreb, translating and writing extensively about Russian avant-garde writers.

When ethnic warfare erupted in the 1990s, Ugrešić took a courageous public stance against nationalist chauvinism, xenophobia, and militarism. After being subjected to severe media ostracism and harassment in Croatia, she went into exile in 1993, eventually making Amsterdam her home. Her essays and novels, including The Culture of Lies, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, and Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, dissected displacement, European identity, and the destruction of shared memory with razor-sharp irony and melancholic warmth. She received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2016.