Customer Reviews

Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination

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An interesting but hardly exhaustive study of a fascinating subject. The major flaw here is that the author overlooks (deliberately?) works that do not agree with her theory, namely that the West (particularly England) invented a literary "Wild East" to demonize, "infantilize" or ridicule the perceived alien threat of the Balkans.

One example is when the author discusses the utterly obscure KATTIE OF THE BALKANS by forgotten author F. O. H. Nash while ignoring the still in-print THE LOST PRINCE by well-known author of THE SECRET GARDEN and A LITTLE PRINCESS, Frances Hodgson Burnett. But KATTIE fits the author's theory while THE LOST PRINCE, with it's strong, self-reliant Balkan heroes, does not.

Also, do not expect an indepth examination of films in this genre, as the cover illustration seems to promise. There is only the barest mention of THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL and the play it was based on, THE SLEEPING PRINCE, and no mention at all of other similarly themed films such as THE SWAN, ROMAN HOLIDAY and THE STUDENT PRINCE.

For a book that promises to give a certain degree of truth on the never-ending Balkan question this work fails miserably. The writer, who is (apparently) of serbo-croatian origin fails on many occasions to give true facts. To mention a few, in speaking about Byron toward the beginning of the book she states that he is now most remembered for his picture in his "Balkan" dress, when I'm sure she means "ALBANIAN" dress; in discussing her accounts of the two Balkan travel-writers Edith Durham and Rebecca West, the author is clearly being biased toward the later whose own sympathises were Yugoslavian. The author states in one particular sentence which struck as especially curious. She states: "...the recognition of a shared past which inspired Durham's lines might conceivably be compared to West's, even if Durham never paused longer than this to consider her own feelings about the Balkans. Any such attempt would have contradicted her endevour to be 'objective' and 'scholarly' in her descriptions. For West, the emotions are the introspection are as important as the act of travelling--they are, in fact, the essence of her journey." (181) One can undoubtedly recognize that West's sympathies for Yugoslavian/Serbian nation are being returned in kind by the author in this work. Perhaps Durham's increasing distaste for the Serbians, which she later came to coin as the "serb-varmint", have influenced the author's (of serb-croation origin) judgment on properly comparing the works of these two women in their proper light. Another instance of complete biased is at the beginning of this chpater when the author gives a background of both writers, and while mentioning (and undermining) the importance of Durham's works, she does not hold back from praising West's work.

In conclusion, this work fails what it completely sets out to do. It promises to give a better view of the Balkans, but what it truly means is to give a better view of the Yugoslavia--be it Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro etc. I cannot claim to be much surprised that a Balkanese is unable to give an objective of the Balkans, because in the words of Edith Durham herself (and included in this work, pg 170) the Balkan people are: "like cats and dogs," and thus, to ask for an objective view of its history, from one of its children, is apparently asking too much!