Croatian writer and essayist Dubravka Ugresic has died in Amsterdam at the age of 73. This was reported by the Croatian news agency Hina, citing the publishing house Multimedijalni Institut in Zagreb, which published her books in Croatia. Ugresic emerged as an astute critic of nationalism and chauvinism of all kinds.
In 1993 she left her homeland, which had become independent two years earlier. She lived in the USA and most recently in the Netherlands. She was massively attacked in Croatia for her incorruptible and negative attitude towards the prevailing nationalist politics at the time. Under President and State founder Franjo Tudjman (1922-1999), the state-controlled media unleashed campaigns of defamation and hatred against the writer. Croatia, a former Yugoslav republic, held its own in the war against the aggressor Serbia (1991-1995), but also committed war crimes against Serbian civilians itself.
Many of Ugresic’s books have been translated into German. Among others, she published the novels “The Ministry of Pain” (2005) and “Baba Yaga Laid an Egg” (2008) as well as the volumes of essays “No one at home” (2007) and “Karaokekultur” (2012). In 1999 she received the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, in 2000 the Heinrich Mann Prize of the Academy of Arts (Berlin) and in 2012 the Jean Améry Prize for European Essay Writing. In her work, Ugresic impresses with “brilliant intellectual analyzes of current problems that concern us all,” said the jury in its decision to award the Améry Prize.