Nisha Rathode (Editor)

Slavenka Drakulić

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Name
  
Slavenka Drakulic

Role
  
Novelist


Education
  
University of Zagreb

Nominations
  
NIN Award

Slavenka Drakulic Drakulic in The Malta Independent Slavenka Drakuli

Spouse
  
Richard Swartz (m. 1976), Mirko Ilic

People also search for
  
Richard Swartz, Mirko Ilic, Ivo, Nicky Lindemann

Books
  
How We Survived Communi, Cafe Europa, They Would Never Hu, S : a novel about the Balkans, Balkan express

Cenzura 08 01 2016 slavenka drakuli


Slavenka Drakulić (born July 4, 1949) is a Croatian journalist, novelist, and essayist whose works on feminism, communism, and postcommunism have been translated into many languages.

Contents

Slavenka Drakulić womenineuropeanhistoryorgimages119SD1jpg

Drakulić was born in Rijeka, PR Croatia, on July 4, 1949. She graduated in comparative literature and sociology from the University in Zagreb in 1976. From 1982 to 1992, she was a staff writer for the Start bi-weekly newspaper and news weekly Danas (both in Zagreb), writing mainly on feminist issues. In addition to her novels and collections of essays, Drakulić's work has appeared in The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Internazionale, The Nation, La Stampa, Dagens Nyheter, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Eurozine, Politiken and The Guardian. She lives in Croatia and in Sweden.

Slavenka Drakulić Slavenka Drakulic Alchetron The Free Social Encyclopedia

Slavenka drakuli dora i minotaur


Biography

Slavenka Drakulić Slavenka Drakuli ReCreating Europe ReCreating Europe

Drakulić temporarily left Croatia for Sweden in the early 1990s for political reasons. A notorious unsigned 1992 Globus article (Slaven Letica, a known sociologist, former advisor to President Franjo Tudjman and writer, subsequently admitted to being its author) accused five Croatian female writers, Drakulić included, of being "witches" and of "raping" Croatia. According to Letica, these writers failed to take a definitive stance against rape as a planned military tactic by Bosnian Serb forces against Croats, and rather treated it in feminist fashion, as crimes of "unidentified males" against women. Soon after the publication, Drakulić started to receive telephone threats; her property was also vandalized. Finding little or no support from her erstwhile friends and colleagues, she decided to leave Croatia.

Her noted works relate to the Yugoslav wars. As If I Am Not There is about crimes against women in the Bosnian War, while They Would Never Hurt a Fly is a book in which she also analyzed her experience overseeing the proceedings and the inmates of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague. Both books touch on the same issues that caused her wartime emigration from the home country. In scholarly circles, she is better known for her two collections of essays; "How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed" and 'Cafe Europa. These are both non-fiction accounts of Drakulić's life during and after communism.

Slavenka Drakulić Slavenka Drakulic Alchetron The Free Social Encyclopedia

Her 2008 novel, Frida's Bed, is based on a biography of a Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

Slavenka Drakulić Slavenka Drakuli quotEurope Twenty Years after

Her latest book of essays A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism: Fables from a Mouse, a Parrot, a Bear, a Cat, a Mole, a Pig, a Dog, & a Raven was published in February 2011 in the US by Penguin, and widely reviewed to great acclaim. The book consists of eight reflections told from the point of view of a different animal. Each beast reflects on the remembrance of communism in different countries in Eastern Europe. Although some reviewers interpreted the book as condemnation of communism and its lingering effects, the book also critiques the ravages of the economic system that replaced it. In the second to last chapter, a Romanian dog explains that under capitalism everyone is unequal “but some are more unequal than others,” an inversion of a famous George Orwell quote from Animal Farm.

Drakulić lives in Stockholm and Zagreb.

References

Slavenka Drakulić Wikipedia