Description

‘A writer to cherish’ Susan Sontag

‘The story of a shattered life can only be told in bits and pieces’

A pink cigarette lighter, lollipop sticks, a beer-bottle opener: these are some of the contents of Roland the Walrus’s stomach, displayed in the Berlin Zoo. As our narrator wanders the city, she recalls the objects and memories, dreams and reflections that make up her life – a photo album, a recipe, a fleeting love affair – as they connect to reveal the fractured reality of being an exile.

Written in the aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender is a quietly profound, absurdly humorous meditation on displacement, yearning and the weight of the past.

Publisher Review

Dubravka Ugresic is a writer to be followed. A writer to cherish — Susan Sontag The philosopher of evil and exile, and the storyteller of many shattered lives — Charles Simic She wrote in a deeply melancholy vein as well as with adroit comic wit… an unusual mixture of Orwellian stringency and madcap lightness — Marina Warner