Winner of the 1999 Heldt Prize for Best Translation in Slavic/East European/Eurasian Women's
Studies from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies
The
Culture of Lies shows us the banality and brutality of nationalism
and the way that nationalistic ideology permeates every pore of life.
Dubravka Ugresic's ascerbic 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, aggression against people's
own "brothers," the conformity of intellectuals, propaganda and censorship,
the strategies of human manipulation, and the walls of Europe, which
she argues never really did fall.
First published in Holland, then in Germany and Croatia, The
Culture of Lies has been enthusiastically received in Europe,
earning Ugresic two prestigious awards: the Charles Veillon European
Essay Prize in 1996 and the Dutch Culture of Resistance Prize in
1997. Shot through with sarcasm and satire, it is one of the most
intelligent and lucid accounts of an appalling episode in history.
In the tradition of Milan Kundera and Karl Kraus, 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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