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The Culture of Lies

4.23 of 5 stars 4.23 · rating details · 102 ratings · 7 reviews

Ugresic'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 argu...more

Paperback, 256 pages

Published July 1st 1999 by Phoenix (first published 1995)

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Dec 08, 2011 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Great stuff. Greatly powerful, painful, poignant, piercing, peppery, pithy, polemical and personal stuff. An expatriate Croat reviled by a considerable portion of her fellow Dinaric Alpine Slavs in that oddly configured republic for opting to publicly air these stinging rebukes and accusations, Ugrešić grew up within an ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse Yugoslavia embracing a Titoist cult of Brotherhood and Unity of which, even then, dark and disturbing undercurrents occasional...more

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Oct 01, 2009 Harry Rutherford rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: around-the-world, balkans, europe

The Culture of Lies by Dubravka Ugrešić is a book of essays written between 1991 and 1996 — that is, during and just after the wars that resulted from the collapse of Yugoslavia. It is my book from Croatia for the Read The World challenge, although there is a slight awkwardness to that choice. This is from the ‘Glossary’ which Ugrešić includes at the back of the book:

Identity:

A few years ago my homeland was confiscated, and, along with it my passport. In exchange I was given a new homeland, far...more The Culture of Lies by Dubravka Ugrešić is a book of essays written between 1991 and 1996 — that is, during and just after the wars that resulted from the collapse of Yugoslavia. It is my book from Croatia for the Read The World challenge, although there is a slight awkwardness to that choice. This is from the ‘Glossary’ which Ugrešić includes at the back of the book:

Identity:

A few years ago my homeland was confiscated, and, along with it my passport. In exchange I was given a new homeland, far smaller and less comfortable. They handed me a passport, a ’symbol’ of my new identity. Thousands of people paid for those new ‘identity symbols’ with their lives, thousands were driven out of their homes, scattered, humiliated, deprived of their rights, imprisoned and impoverished. I possess very expensive identity documents. the fact often fills me with horror. And shame.

My passport has not made me a Croat. On the contrary, I am far less that today than I was before.

I am no one. And everyone. In Croatia I shall be a Serb, in Serbia a Croat, in Bulgaria a Turk, in Turkey a Greek, in Greece a Macedonian, in Macedonia a Bulgarian… Being an ethnic ‘bastard’ or ’schizophrenic’ is my natural choice, I even consider it a sign of mental and moral health. And I know that I am not alone. Violent, stubborn insitence on national identities has provoked a response: today many young citizens of former Yugoslavia, particularly those scattered throughout the world, stubbornly refuse any ethnic labels.

So, although Ugrešić was born in what is now Croatia, and so her book counts for my purposes as a book from Croatia, I should be careful not to label her as a ‘Croat writer’. But then it was never the intention for this challenge that the books and writers chosen should be taken as representative of those countries — or not in a straightforward way. In the context of this challenge, that dynamic between books and countries is quite interesting, but I think it needs a post of its own.

The essays are fascinating. They communicate a sense of an overwhelming cultural trauma, not just because of the war itself but because of the whiplash speed of the changes as all the ex-Yugoslavs created new identities for themselves. Streets were renamed, history rewritten, the literary canon divvied up.

And it wasn’t simply an assertion of a new positive identity for, for example, Croatia, it was necessarily a rejection not just of Serbia and Bosnia but of Yugoslavia. So the country where all of them had lived their whole lives, and which had been an imperfect but functional state for over 80 years, became a ‘prison of nations’, and anyone who questioned this was suffering from the dangerously subversive ‘Yugo-nostalgia’.

This is from the title essay:

I know of a writer colleague who claimed to a foreign journalist that he was ‘the victim of repression’ under Yugo-communism, that his books were banned, and that he had been in prison. That colleague was never in prison nor was he ‘the victim of repression’ and all his books were regularly published. I do not believe that he was lying. Exposed to media brainwashing, terror by forgetting and collective compulsion, my colleague had simply forgotten his personal history, he carried out an unconscious mental touching-up, and in the general context the spoken lie became an acceptable truth. And after all, the foreign journalist had come to hear just such a story, in his Westerner’s head he already carried such a stereotype: the story of a repressed writer in the former communist regime and a happy end in the new, democratic one.

I know of a Zagreb Japanologist who terrorised the whole Yugoslav cultural scene for years with — Japan! Throughout the whole of former Yugoslavia there sprang up haiku circles, haiku poets, ikebana courses, anthologies of Japanese poetry, twinnings between Osaka and Varaždin, festivals of Yugoslav haiku poets. Thanks to the activity of the aforementioned Japanologist, the inflation of haiku poetry during ‘totalitarianism’ had given us all a ‘pain in the neck’. Today the famous Japanologist claims that under the ‘Tito regime’ he was exposed to repression because of … haiku poetry!

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

The essays approach this central subject from various directions — the metaphor of cleanness and cleansing, the relationship between eastern and western Europe, the kitschiness of nationalist aesthetics, pop music — and they are all well-written, thought provoking and rather quotable. But instead of typing out long extracts I’ll just suggest you read it yourself.(less)

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Jan 10, 2013 MJ Nicholls rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, other-parts-of-europe, distaff

I found myself trapped reading this book of essays on Serb-Croat pickles and peccadilloes. Plucking it idly from the library, based solely on my previous four sit-downs with Dubravka, I found the content not in my purview. And yet, her engaging voice kept me returning for more until—lo and behold!—all 288pp were completed, and I emerged 1% more knowledgeable about Balkan history (I have, of course, forgotten it all already). This is why reading is imperative for spongeheads like me: while we’re...more

15 likes · like · see review

Nov 19, 2008 Kelly marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: eastern-european, essay, dont-own-yet

This book has come up a lot in my research for my senior seminar paper that I am doing on her. The more I read about this book in my research, the more I want to read it. One day when I have money.

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Nov 06, 2012 Nina rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: various-flavours-of-yugoslavian-lit, non-fiction, essays, war-is-hell, just-kill-yourself-it-ll-hurt-less

apparently my life isn't depressing enough, so i figured that reliving the happy happy joy joy times of the nineties was a good idea. *headdesk*

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Aug 03, 2012 Ochon von Güpke added it · review of another edition

Świetna pozycja. Uważam przy tym, że jest to książka "o Bałkanach" mniej więcej na tyle, na ile "Ryszard III" jest książką "o królu" - to wszystko prawda, ale szkoda byłoby czytać ją tylko przez taki pryzmat. Pani Ugrešić w zacytowanym w opisie fragmencie stwierdza, że to po prostu pozycja o nacjonalizmie - i to stwierdzenie wydaje mi się wyczerpujące. "Kultura kłamstwa" to dowód na to, że ludzie wszędzie zachowują się mniej więcej tak samo.

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May 13, 2008 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dubravka Urgresic writes thoughtful, interesting essays about how the fall of communism destroyed Yugoslav society. I really enjoy her, but I imagine that people without my same niche interests would not be so fond of her writing.

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Apr 05, 2013 Hannah Miranda rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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Apr 01, 2013 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: academic, history, memoir, nationalism, state-failure, eastern-europe, women-s-issues

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Shelves: g-nonfiction

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About Dubravka Ugrešić

Dubravka Ugrešić earned her degrees in Comparative Literature, Russian Language and Literature at the University of Zagreb, and worked for twenty years at the Institute for Theory of Literature at Zagreb University, successfully pursuing parallel careers as a writer and a literary scholar.

She started writing professionally with screenplays for children’s television programs, as an undergraduate. I...more Dubravka Ugrešić earned her degrees in Comparative Literature, Russian Language and Literature at the University of Zagreb, and worked for twenty years at the Institute for Theory of Literature at Zagreb University, successfully pursuing parallel careers as a writer and a literary scholar.

She started writing professionally with screenplays for children’s television programs, as an undergraduate. In 1971 she published her first book for children Mali plamen, which was awarded a prestigious Croatian literary prize for children’s literature. Ugresic published two more books (Filip i Srecica, 1976; Kucni duhovi, 1988), and then gave up writing for children.

As a literary scholar Dubravka Ugresic was particularly interested in Russian avant-garde culture. She was a co-editor of the international scholarly project Pojmovnik ruske avangarde, (A Glossary of the Russian Avangarde) for many years. She rediscovered forgotten Russian writers such as Konstantin Vaginov and Leonid Dobychin, and published a book on Russian contemporary fiction (Nova ruska proza, 1980). She translated fiction into Croatian from Russian (Boris Pilnyak, Gola godina; Daniil Kharms, Nule i nistice), and edited anthologies of both Russian contemporary (Pljuska u ruci, 1989) and avant-garde writing.

Dubravka Ugresic was best known in the former Yugoslavia for her fiction, novels and short stories: Poza za prozu, 1978; Stefica Cvek u raljama zivota, 1981; Zivot je bajka, 1983; Forsiranje romana reke, 1988. Her novel Forsiranje romana reke was given the coveted NIN-award for the best novel of the year: Ugresic was the first woman to receive this honor. Croatian film director Rajko Grlic made a film U raljama zivota (1984) based on Ugresic’s short novel Stefica Cvek u raljama zivota. Ugresic co-authored the screenplay, as she did with screenplays for two other movies and a TV drama.

In 1991, when the war broke out in the former Yugoslavia, Ugresic took a firm anti-nationalistic stand and consequently an anti-war stand. She started to write critically about nationalism (both Croatian and Serbian), the stupidity and criminality of war, and soon became a target of the nationalistically charged media, officials, politicians, fellow writers and anonymous citizens. She was proclaimed a “traitor”, a “public enemy” and a “witch”, ostracized and exposed to harsh and persistent media harassment. She left Croatia in 1993.

Dubravka Ugresic has continued writing since she began living abroad. She has published both novels (Muzej bezuvjetne predaje, Ministarstvo boli) and books of essays (Americki fikcionar, Kultura lazi, Zabranjeno citanje, Nikog nema doma). Ugresic’s essays have appeared in American (“Context”, “The Hedgehog Review”) and European newspapers and magazines (such as “Vrij Nederland”, “NRC Handelsblad”, “Die Zeit”, “Neue Zurcher Zeitung”, “Die Welt Woche”, and many others). She teaches occasionally at American and European universities. Her books have been translated into more then twenty languages. Dubravka Ugresic has received several major European literary awards.

She is based in Amsterdam today, working as a freelance writer.(less)

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