Croatian novelist and essayist, Dubravka Ugrešić, a perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize, died on March 17, 2023, in Amsterdam, where she had made her home since 1996. As Harriman Writer in Residence in October 2015, Ugrešić  taught the graduate seminar “National vs. Transnational Literature,” and a two-day conference was held in her honor, at which she delivered the keynote address “What We Talk About When We Talk About Literature.” That same month Ugrešić was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, often referred to as the “Little Nobel.”

“I know of no other writer who has been so adept at translating an experience of war and exile to the observation of the foibles and shortcomings of humankind, to leave the reader feeling, if occasionally somewhat despondent, nevertheless bemused and comforted by her humor and often vicious attacks on the very same things we have all suffered from or protested against as we try to go about our daily lives.” – Alison Anderson, Ugrešić’s nominating juror for the Neustadt Prize.

Read “Without Country: An Interview with Dubravka Ugrešić” by Meghan Forbes (Harriman Magazine, Summer 2016).

Photo: Archives of Mariusz Kubik, http://www.mariuszkubik.pl, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons