essay

The History of Science and Fantasy Fiction in Croatia

According to Milena Benini, science and fantasy fiction has a long and unusual history in Croatia. Many women authors are among the most well-known and prominent in the genre.

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Dubravka Ugrešić: The Spirit of the Kakanian Province

"While I was leafing through a few Croatian Kakanian novels (which I'd last cracked in high school), I felt I was working not with literary texts but genes. It was like discovering something we have always known but failed to attend to, like discovering a birthmark exactly where it was on our parents, children, grandchildren. At the same time, the literary critic in me grumbled while reading the ongoing episodes of these provincial literary soap operas, which have been going on for a century."

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JURE KAŠTELAN: Dragutin Tadijanović and his poetry

The following article is about Dragutin Tadijanović (1905 –2007), one of the most popular and influential Croatian poets of the 20th century, and was written by Jure Kaštelan (1919 - 1990), also one of the most important Croatian poets. The article was originally published in the Bridge Literary Review (number 3 from 1980).

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Mladen Urem: An introduction to the Croatian avant-garde writer Janko Polic Kamov

Any comparative historical analysis of literature demonstrates from the context of examination that a point of division, a beginning or foreshadowing of something new, is present in various places. This time, aside from the usual division, let us consider the special status of the fin de siècle as an inherently undefinable yet sufficiently recognizable category and a motif for discussion of the intercontinentally virtually unknown but very important Croatian writer Janko Polic Kamov.

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The Mediterranean: Room without a view

Jurica Pavicic
Wespennest, Eurozine

The mythical Mediterranean of the tourist imagination masks a reality of debt, stagnation and social decline. Yet the region colludes in its own downfall, writes Jurica Pavicic, trading in former glories while acquiescing to political and economic exploitation.

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Where Are the Women in Translation?

Words without borders, By Alison Anderson, May 14, 2013

Alison Anderson is the author of two novels, Hidden Latitudes and Darwin’s Wink. Her translations include Leila Marouane’s Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris, two novels by Sélim Nassib, Amélie Nothomb’s Tokyo Fiancée, Lifeform, and Hygiene and the Assassin, and Muriel Barbery’s Elegance of the Hedgehog and Gourmet Rhapsody. She lives near Lausanne, Switzerland.

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Srećko Horvat and Igor Štiks: Towards a Utopia of Democracy

27/04/2013

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism

essay

The Third Reich in Contemporary Fiction

RICHARD MARTIN
http://www.alluvium-journal.org

"The third and final novel that I would like to consider here – Daša Drndić’s Trieste (first published in Croatian in 2007 and in English in 2012) – features a much looser collage of historical materials. These include photographs, maps, transcripts (some taken from the Nuremberg Trials, others imagined), extensive footnotes and biographical summaries. These fragments seem to comprise the research archive of the novel’s central (fictional) character, Haya Tedeschi, who is searching for her son..."

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Hyperparents

DRAGAN JURAK
www.zivljenjenadotik.si

The reigning model of hyper-parenthood makes parents extremely reduced people. All these people gathering around nurseries and schools may be perfectly interesting and nice. When it comes to their children, they absolutely identify themselves with their role as a parent and transform from complex persons into caricatures.

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Computer and Visual Research - Ways of Thinking and Scope of Acting

An essay by Matko Meštrović from his book Dispersion of Meaning - The Fading Out of the Doctrinaire World? (Cambridge Scholars Publishing):

In his letter addressed to the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, in June last year, Frieder Nake asked a curious question: How did it happen that Zagreb for a few years became a very important place for this kind of art and visual research … (Frieder Nake, June 16, 2003).
When I recently received a copy of his letter I was quite embarrassed: How a man who visited that city for several times and regularly participated in activity of its museum from 1968 to 1973 could ask such a question? But trying to react, I found myself uncertain of what really was happening there in those five years.

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Lost in Castration

Tomislav Kuzmanović

But what happens when we try our hand at translating a thing such as penis; when we attempt to erect it in a sociocultural context different from its original context? Some expressions contain the word kurac (penis), but they cannot be translated into English without the word being lost. Even when they get translated into English and the word is kept, the whole spectrum of the meanings of the phrase containing it is lost. What gets lost here is crucial for understanding the text at its full and it will be the topic of the ensuing discussion.

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The Enemy Never Sleeps? Not Any More - Nowadays It Is Just Taking a Nap!

Robert Perišić

"The laziness became an ideological story so that we would not think about the system. In the past, everybody said that the enemy never sleeps. This is not the case nowadays. Nowadays the enemy is asleep far too often. He is taking a nap under a cypress tree, slowly sipping his uzo. The ideology of laziness has incidentally brought about a new kind of racism. And this ideological propaganda, as it always does, has taken root."

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Culture as Ressource

Nenad Popović

The irresponsibility of elites towards culture is today not that dangerous as it was at the end of the eighties and in the first half of the nineties. At least it is not dangerous in a direct way. Back then these elites were co-responsible or direct responsible for killings, tortures and destruction. Today they have restructured themselves. However, the priority national task of culture in each of these countries and nations should be to stop this strategy of mental and cultural crippling.

panorama

Rebecca Duran's Take on Modern Day Life in Pazin (Istria)

Croatia is a small, charming country known today as a prime European tourist destination. However, it has a complicated often turbulent history and is seemingly always destined to be at the crossroads of empires, religions and worldviews, with its current identity and culture incorporating elements from its former Communist, Slavic, Austrian-Hungarian, Catholic, Mediterranean, and European traditions.

review

Review of Dubravka Ugrešić's Age of Skin

Dubravka Ugrešić is one of the most internationally recognizable writers from Croatia, but she has a contentious relationship with her home country, having gone into self-exile in the early 90s. Her recently translated collection of essays, The Age of Skin, touches on topics of of exile and displacement, among others. Read a review of Ugrešić’s latest work of non-fiction, expertly translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac, in the link below .

panorama

Vlaho Bukovac Exhibition in Zagreb Will Run Through May

Vlaho Bukovac (1855-1922) is arguably Croatia's most renowned painter. Born in the south in Cavtat, he spent some of his most impressionable teenage years in New York with his uncle and his first career was as a sailor, but he soon gave that up due to injury. He went on to receive an education in the fine arts in Paris and began his artistic career there. He lived at various times in New York, San Francisco, Peru, Paris, Cavtat, Zagreb and Prague. His painting style could be classified as Impressionism which incorporated various techniques such as pointilism.

An exhibition dedicated to the works of Vlaho Bukovac will be running in Klovićevi dvori Gallery in Gornji Grad, Zagreb through May 22nd, 2022.

review

Review of Neva Lukić's Endless Endings

Read a review of Neva Lukić's collection of short stories, Endless Endings, recently translated into English, in World Literature Today.

panorama

A Guide to Zagreb's Street Art

Zagreb has its fair share of graffiti, often startling passersby when it pops up on say a crumbling fortress wall in the historical center of the city. Along with some well-known street murals are the legendary street artists themselves. Check out the article below for a definitive guide to Zagreb's best street art.

panorama

Beloved Croatian Children's Show Professor Balthazar Now Available in English on YouTube

The colorful, eclectic and much beloved Croatian children's cartoon Professor Balthazar was created by Zlatko Grgić and produced from the late 1960s through the 1970s. Now newer generations will be able to enjoy the Professor's magic, whether they speak Croatian or English.

panorama

New Book on Croatian Football Legend Robert Prosinečki

Robert Prosinečki's long and fabled football career includes winning third place in the 1998 World Cup as part of the Croatian national team, stints in Real Madrid and FC Barcelona as well as managerial roles for the Croatian national team, Red Star Belgrade, the Azerbaijani national team and the Bosnian Hercegovinian national team.

news

Sandorf Publishing House Launches American Branch

Croatian publishing house Sandorf launched their American branch called Sandorf Passage earlier this year.

panorama

Jonathan Bousfield on the Seedy Side of the Seaside

From strange tales of mysterious murders to suspected criminals hiding out to scams, duels and gambling, Opatija, a favourite seaside escape for Central Europeans at the turn of the last century, routinely filled Austrian headlines and the public's imagination in the early 20th century.

review

Review of new English translation of Grigor Vitez's AntonTon

Hailed as the father of 20th century Croatian children's literature, Grigor Vitez (1911-1966) is well known and loved in his homeland. With a new English translation of one of his classic tales AntonTon (AntunTun in Croatian), children around the world can now experience the author's delightful depiction of the strong-minded and silly AntonTon. The Grigor Vitez Award is an annual prize given to the best Croatian children's book of the year.

news

The Best of New Eastern European Literature

Have an overabundance of free time, thanks to the pandemic and lockdowns? Yearning to travel but unable to do so safely? Discover the rhythm of life and thought in multiple Eastern European countries through exciting new literature translated into English. From war-torn Ukraine to tales from Gulag inmates to the search for identity by Eastern Europeans driven away from their home countries because of the economic or political situations but still drawn back to their cultural hearths, this list offers many new worlds to explore.

panorama

More Zagreb Street Art

Explore TimeOut's gallery of fascinating and at times thought-provoking art in the great open air gallery of the streets of Zagreb.

panorama

Welcome to Zagreb's Hangover Museum

Partied too hard last night? Drop by Zagreb's Hangover Museum to feel more normal. People share their craziest hangover stories and visitors can even try on beer goggles to experience how the world looks like through drunken eyes.

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Jonathan Bousfield on the Future as Imagined in 1960s Socialist Yugoslavia

How will the futuristic world of 2060 look? How far will technology have advanced, and how will those advancements affect how we live our everyday lives? These are the questions the Zagreb-based magazine Globus asked in a series of articles in 1960, when conceptualizing what advancements society would make 40 years in the future, the then far-off year of 2000. The articles used fantastical predictions about the future to highlight the technological advancements already made by the then socialist Yugoslavia. Take a trip with guide, Jonathan Bousfield, back to the future as envisioned by journalists in 1960s Yugoslavia.

panorama

Untranslatable Croatian Phrases

What’s the best way for an open-minded foreigner to get straight to the heart of another culture and get a feel for what makes people tick? Don’t just sample the local food and drink and see the major sights, perk up your ears and listen. There’s nothing that gives away the local flavor of a culture more than the common phrases people use, especially ones that have no direct translation.

Check out a quirky list of untranslatable Croatian phrases from Croatian cultural guide extraordinaire, Andrea Pisac, in the link below:

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Jonathon Bousfield on the Museum of Broken Relationships

Just got out of a serious relationship and don't know what to do with all those keepsakes and mementos of your former loved one? The very popular and probably most unique museum in Zagreb, the Museum of Broken Relationships, dedicated to preserving keepsakes alongside the diverse stories of relationships gone wrong, will gladly take them. Find out how the museum got started and take an in-depth look at some of its quirkiest pieces in the link below.

panorama

Cool Things To Do in Zagreb

Zagreb is Croatia’s relaxed, charming and pedestrian-friendly capital. Check out Time Out’s definitive Zagreb guide for a diverse set of options of what to explore in the city from unusual museums to legendary flea markets and everything in between.

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Jonathan Bousfield on Diocletian's Legacy in Split

Diocletian’s Palace is the main attraction in Split, the heart and soul of the city. Because of the palace, Split’s city center can be described as a living museum and it draws in the thousands of tourists that visit the city annually. But how much do we really know about the palace’s namesake who built it, the last ruler of a receding empire? Jonathan Bousfield contends that history only gives us a partial answer.

interview

The Poetry of Zagreb

Cities have served as sources of inspiration, frustration, and discovery for millennia. The subject of sonnets, stories, plays, the power centers of entire cultures, hotbeds of innovation, and the cause of wars, cities are mainstays of the present and the future with millions more people flocking to them every year.

Let the poet, Zagreb native Tomica Bajsić, take you on a lyrical tour of the city. Walk the streets conjured by his graceful words and take in the gentle beauty of the Zagreb of his childhood memories and present day observation.

panorama

You Haven't Experienced Zagreb if You Haven't Been to the Dolac Market

Dolac, the main city market, is a Zagreb institution. Selling all the fresh ingredients you need to whip up a fabulous dinner, from fruits and vegetables to fish, meat and homemade cheese and sausages, the sellers come from all over Croatia. Positioned right above the main square, the colorful market is a beacon of a simpler way of life and is just as bustling as it was a century ago.

panorama

Croatian Phrases Translated into English

Do you find phrases and sayings give personality and flair to a language? Have you ever pondered how the culture and history of a place shape the common phrases? Check out some common sayings in Croatian with their literal translations and actual meanings below.

panorama

Discover Croatia's Archaeological Secrets

Discover Croatia’s rich archaeological secrets, from the well known ancient Roman city of Salona near Split or the Neanderthal museum in Krapina to the often overlooked Andautonia Archaeological Park, just outside of Zagreb, which boasts the excavated ruins of a Roman town or the oldest continuously inhabited town in Europe, Vinkovci.

panorama

Croatian Sites on UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List

A little know fact is that Croatia, together with Spain, have the most cultural and historical heritage under the protection of UNESCO, and Croatia has the highest number of UNESCO intangible goods of any European country.

panorama

Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb

The National Theater in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, is one of those things which always finds its way to every visitor’s busy schedule.

panorama

Zagreb's Street Art

So you're visiting Zagreb and are curious about it's underground art scene? Check out this guide to Zagreb's street art and explore all the best graffiti artists' work for yourself on your next walk through the city.