Drakulić, Slavenka

(Croatian, 1949– )

Drakulic is a journalist of international reputation who lives chiefly in Zagreb. Holograms of Fear (1989), her first novel, forms a good introduction to her work's psychological intensities. Set in New York with flashbacks to Zagreb, it focuses on a woman's experience of major surgery. In Marble Skin (1989) an artist produces a sculpture of her mother, who reacts by attempting suicide. The subsequent dialogue between the two confronts a past of suffering and abuse they have formerly chosen to ignore. The war in Bosnia destroys the life of a young teacher in As if I am not There (1999) when a Serbian soldier walks into her home. Ordered to leave, she enters a nightmare of ethnic cleansing as her journey through the transit camps begins.

Ivan Klima, Elaine Feinstein  DH