Description
Description
The Ministry of Pain tells the story of Tanja Lucic, an exile from Yugoslavia and a lecturer in Serbo-Croatian literature at the University of Amsterdam. Her class is filled with other Yugoslav exiles, not much younger than she, who have found temporary refuge in the Department of Slavonic Languages. Rather than teach literature, Tanja prods the students to reconstruct their pasts by writing essays that indulge their "Yugonostalgia" and their memories of Yugoslavia's culture and disintegration in war. Meanwhile, Tanja and her student Igor form a dangerously close relationship that threatens to unleash all the tensions of life in exile. With her sharp and melancholy observations, Dubravka Ugresic illuminates with savage compassion our shared human homelessness.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"Soulful, often searing...This is a work that comes from the gut, one that deserves to be read." -- New York Times Book Review
"[A] powerful novel of ideas." -- Time Out New York
"This sorrowful tale packs a powerful punch." -- Booklist
"This edgy, extraordinary novel . . . offers universal insights into what it is like to lose home, nationality and language." -- The Sunday Times (London)
"[The Ministry of Pain] is a disturbing read that should have you in its thrall." -- The Times (London)
"Splendidly ambitious...She is a writer to follow. A writer to be cherished." -- Susan Sontag
"Ugresic must be numbered among what Jacques Maritain called the dreamers of the true; she draws us into the dream." -- New York Times
"Like Nabokov, Ugresic affirms our ability to remember as a source for saving our moral and compassionate identity." -- Washington Post
"Ugresic's books contain some of the most profound reflections on culture, memory and madness you will ever read." -- The Independent
"Ugresic's cunning, subtle technique is at its most powerful here." -- The Independent (London)
"The Ministry of Pain is a shiningly weird and powerful novel...[it] approaches perfection." -- Washington Post
"The Ministry of Pain is a masterly novel." -- Harper's Magazine
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
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