The Exile and the Memory of Yugoslavia in Dubravka Ugrešić’s Novel The Museum of Unconditional Surrender

• In Event: Away from Home: Memories and Echoes of Yugoslavia in Post-Yugoslav Prose Portraying Exile

Abstract

Drawing on Andrea Zlatar’s 2004 study Writing in Exile/Asylum from Text, Body, Trauma: Essays on Contemporary Women’s Literature, this paper analyzes how Dubravka Ugrešić’s The Museum of Unconditional Surrender explores the problems of memory and forgetting, particularly through its fragmented narrative and autobiographical elements. It examines how Ugrešić intertwines personal and collective histories to critique national identity as a narrative construct, rather than a fixed essence, while also considering the role of photography as a metaphor for memory. Ultimately, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender serves as a metaphorical archive of discarded memories, revealing the fragility of identity and the selective nature of historical remembrance in the post-Yugoslav era.

Author

• Andrea Anđelinić, U of Zagreb (Croatia)