Karaoke Culture
Dubravka Ugrešić, Ellen Elias-Bursac (translation), Celia Hawkesworth (translation), David Williams (translation)"Ugresic is sharp, funny & unafraid. . . . Orwell would approve."—Times Literary Supplement
Over the past three decades, Dubravka Ugresic has established herself as one of Europe"s greatest—& most entertaining—thinkers & creators, and it's in her essays that Ugresic is at her sharpest. With laser focus, she pierces our pop culture, dissecting the absurdity of daily life with a wit & style that's all her own.
Whether it's commentary on jaded youth, the ways technology has made us soft in the head, or how wrestling a hotel minibar into a bathtub is the best way to stick it to The Man, Ugresic writes with unmatched honesty & panache. Karaoke Culture is full of candid, personal, & opinionated accounts of topics ranging from the baffling worldwide-pop-culture phenomena to the detriments of conformist nationalism.
Sarcastic, biting, &, at times, even heartbreaking, this new collection of essays fully captures the outspoken brilliance of Ugresic's insights into our modern world's culture & conformism, the many ways in which it is ridiculous, & how (deep, deep down) we are all true suckers for it.
Dubravka Ugrešić was the author of several works of fiction & several essay collections, including the NBCC award finalist, Karaoke Culture. She went into exile from Croatia after being label a "witch" for her anti-nationalistic stance during the Yugoslav war. She died in March 2023.
David Williams did his doctoral research on the post-Yugoslav writings of Dubravka Ugresic & the idea of a "literature of the Eastern European ruins." He is the author of Writing Postcommunism.
ELLEN ELIAS-BURSAĆ is the leading translator of Croatian into English . Her translation of David Albahari’s novel Gotz & Meyer was awarded the National Translation Award by the American Literary Translator’s Association.