Customer Reviews

The Museum of Unconditional Surrender

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book deserves high marks -- well written, well translated, it gives an unusual and sensitive picture of the life of an exile from the former Yugoslavia. But exiles are not always displaced people: they can be elderly, alone, disoriented, misunderstood -- all prey to an inner exile. Ms. Ugresic's intriguing juxtaposition of stories shows the many different ways in which people construct their own biographies or those of others, but ultimately share many of the same emotions and insoluble problems. There are a lot of wise and touching observations in this "collection" of pieces which ultimately form a moving and poetic whole.

I have become skillful at avoiding books written on the topic of my former homeland and its vicissitudes. After 10 years of exile and statelessness, a refugee is supposed to have grown a thick skin... Ugresic gets me. I cry and I shiver when I read her. I feel as if going through a dark tunnel while holding somebody's hand. However, I don't know (and I don't want to know)if a person with a permanent citizenship and a stable state of mind would like it.

Umberto Eco once said (in his book called The name of the rose):"Only thing that makes a man different than the animal is his ability to laugh" Different author (which doesen't have anything to do with the literature, at least not in the one they call clasic), once said:"There is only one kind of sickness that only humans can suffer from, and it is called - nostalgia."
And this is the book, about it. This is the book, about the feeling you get when you lie at your bed late at night, thinking about all the places and person you have visited and got to know and like, this is the book about irreversibility of the time, and book about stupid mass making stupid mistakes.
Wraped in a form where exile is the main focus, with added retrospective of the war which held place on Balcan in the 90's, told with beautiful language skill (I read the book in the original language, wasn't to difficul considering that I'm native speaker of it :), so I cannot judge the quality of translation,) this book is a masterpiece.
Four stars because fourth part of the book is really bad when compared to rest, with flat prosaic skills, and simple sentences.

I'd like to be able to say that "The Museum of Unconditional Surrender" earned a solid 4-star rating, but it didn't. It took a lot of deliberation to figure out if this was a "good" book or a merely "okay" one. Allow me to elaborate.

"The Museum of Unconditional Surrender", like Dubravka Ugresic's book of essays "Nobody's Home" (published by Open Letter), is a book that deals very much with displacement, exile and statelessness. It's a tough topic, but Ugresic handles it with ease, perhaps due to too much experience in the field. It could be my mistake was reading "Museum" after Ugresic's essays in "Nobody's Home". The essays repeat many of the same ideas raised in her novel, but in a far more concise, natural format. In "The Museum of Unconditional Surrender", things get a little messy.

For starters, this isn't a novel. Aspects of it are fictional, no doubt, but the tone and the approach are very personal, making it seem far more autobiographical than fictional. Perhaps, again, because I read her essays first, but Ugresic's writing felt very essay-like. The short, sparse writing coupled with the somewhat linked yet alternating stories only strengthens that impression. Unlike the essays, though, there IS an overall, encompassing theme to the book. It's this theme of exile that makes the book readable and provides it with flow. Even so, the flow is inconsistent and somewhat fragmented. It's hard to keep track of and doesn't really lead the story along.

Ugresic's writing is sharp and intelligent, but somewhat distant. There are no characters to get to know, no plot to speak of, and the fragments mostly lack flow from one another. One story - near the very end of the book - was brilliant, clever and touching. But to get to that point requires a lot of effort and time. It was worth it, but I cannot say that it will be for many readers. Ugresic's writing requires quite a bit of patience, perhaps more than all readers can stomach.

A very interesting, thought-provoking and intelligent book. "The Museum of Unconditional Surrender" is a weird and frustrating book at times, but sparks of brilliance make it a worthwhile read for the patient reader.

i was prepared to like the book, but instead found it pretentious and irritating. the author seemed more intent upon demonstrating her knowledge of literary technique than in getting the message, whatever it was, across to the readers.