From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

The Museum of Unconditional Surrender

Dubravka Ugrešić,

Celia Hawkesworth (Translator)

Start date: September 1, 2017

Finish date: September 30, 2017

Discussion: Around Europe 2017

Discussion leader: Dianne

Why we're reading this: September 2017 Around Europe selection
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What Members Thought

Sep 16, 2017 El rated it it was amazing

Shelves: hear-me-roar-and-gender, permanent-collection, eastern-central-european-lit, 1001-books-list, 20th-centurylit-late

Having read some of Ugrešić's books previously and being otherwise underwhelmed by them, I did not have high intentions for this book. But there was something about it when I saw it on the clearance shelf, something about that image on the cover, that drew my interest. As I began to read and discovered that a significant part of the book was questioning what photography is, what does it capture, what do those images mean to us years later, what do we know about the people in the image based sole Having read some of Ugrešić's books previously and being otherwise underwhelmed by them, I did not have high intentions for this book. But there was something about it when I saw it on the clearance shelf, something about that image on the cover, that drew my interest. As I began to read and discovered that a significant part of the book was questioning what photography is, what does it capture, what do those images mean to us years later, what do we know about the people in the image based solely on that one image, etc.? Maybe I read a lot more into that than was necessary, but it touched me a lot, in large part because I am fascinated by historical photography.

I have been working on my own project for over 20 years that involve family photos. Part of the reason I have taken almost a month to return to writing this review is because that project is, almost entirely, missing after we moved to a new house earlier this year. If I think about it too much, my chest gets tight, I have trouble breathing, my eyes actually start to fill with tears. I'm devastated and the memory of what I have lost is crushing to me.

I cried as I read Part Two: Family Museum because I felt my entire history had been destroyed, and this part of the book was a reminder of it. But it was beautifully written and reminded me of everything I had intended for my project, so I was conflicted in how to react. I was, in other words, a complete mess during a lot of this book.

"Life is nothing other than a photograph album. Only what is in the album exists. What is not in the album, never happened," says a friend of mine.
(p25)

But I love it. It's not a linear story, not in a traditional sense. I have been telling people who ask that it is experimental, which I know is not a great word to use because "experimental" scares a lot of readers off and I don't want anyone to be scared off from reading this. It's not "experimental" just for the sake of experiment. Written by a Croatian refugee, I see this story (which can appear disjointed in its approach) as being exactly what I would expect it to feel like to live as a refugee. To leave ones country for political reasons, to make a life somewhere else, to recognize these different chapters in ones own life, to investigate ones self in a way that those of us who have never experienced one iota of what someone (like a Croatian refugee in the 1990s, for example, or a Syrian refugee today) else has.

What we take with us through our lives, what is important to us, what we live to do and breathe - these are the things that matter. So when that is disrupted for whatever reason, there's a period of questioning whether or not it's possible to pick up the threads again, rebuild a life or a project. To learn how to live again.

I have made it a goal this year to try to read and get rid of books off my own shelves, clear some space so the books on the floor can have a new place to live. But I can't give this one up yet. I want to revisit it, perhaps down the line when the pain is not still so fresh. This book touched me, in all the good and the bad ways that literature is capable of doing. It's not for everyone, and that's okay. It was sort of just for me. ...more

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Aug 29, 2017 Joey Anderson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The Museum of Unconditional Surrender: a tableau of a broken Yugoslavia.

The novelist and cultural critic Dubravka Ugrešić is an exile from the former state of Yugoslavia, specifically Croatia. Disagreeing with the direction the leaders of her country were taking, she left for Europe. This novel portrays subjects of which I have no experience. I have never been an exile or a refugee. I have no experience of what it might feel like if I could not really live in the United States anymore.

While I re The Museum of Unconditional Surrender: a tableau of a broken Yugoslavia.

The novelist and cultural critic Dubravka Ugrešić is an exile from the former state of Yugoslavia, specifically Croatia. Disagreeing with the direction the leaders of her country were taking, she left for Europe. This novel portrays subjects of which I have no experience. I have never been an exile or a refugee. I have no experience of what it might feel like if I could not really live in the United States anymore.

While I regard the novel highly, I would not recommend it for all readers. Not only would it make you feel that you are living some kind of privileged existence, but that many people around the world live shattered and homeless lives.

This novel is highly innovative, but many readers would not like this novel since only sorrow and anguish inhabit it. Rarely is there any sense of hope. As one character says, “I have always been, in a way, absent.”

Other readers might not like it because its structure serves to alienate the reader for it does not follow a conventional form and prevents the reader from sympathizing with its characters. One might be able to experience some intimacy in three of the novel’s seven sections, which are more conventional narratives (I did sympathize with the female characters in the sixth part, “Group Photograph,” due to the fact that they live more isolated lives from the general populace by being university educated and middle class (what happens in the United States as the professional class lives separately from the working class and they both are separate from the rich)), but the difference in culture between the characters’ lives in the former Yugoslavia might make any kind of identification difficult.

Yet, these types of alienation effects work for this novel to force the reader to focus on the ideas of exile the novelist wants to portray instead of getting lost in the plot and the lives of imaginary characters. That seems a clear intention.

The distance between the reader and the characters is beneficial though, for I think if the reader became emotionally involved, he or she would find it difficult to read.

The structure of the novel includes four sections of lists of numbered narrative paragraphs (the “exhibits” in the museum whose titles are in German to illustrate the exile living in Berlin; the characters, their photographs, and their simple objects, which many people would think of as junk, are the exhibits) that alternate with conventional narrative. No conventional causal-chronological form exists. The act of reading and making meaning is more like working on a jigsaw puzzle without the picture in front of you or attempting to solve a Rubik’s cube. So, don’t expect a plot.

Now, the reasons why you should try it.

The themes of exile, autobiography, documentary reality (photographs), nostalgia, mother-daughter relationships, suicide as a common action, refugees, and societal asylums (the university and middle class life) provoke the reader into consideration of these subjects are quite provocative and unusual. For this reader, living in the relative peace and security of Southern California is quite different than living in exile in Berlin or living in the midst of a civil war.

Since I knew next to nothing of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the ensuing civil war in the Balkans due to the fall of the Soviet Union, I found a few historical videos on youtube.com that would help as background to the novel. I also acquired a book about the fall of Soviet Union (Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire by Victor Sebestyen) and how it affected the countries under that regime. ...more

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