Традиционна международна писателска среща в Загреб през 80-те години на миналия век, рой участници от Източна Европа и от Запада. От „шапката“ изскачат характерни образи, нижат се гротескни, сюрреалистични събития, абсурди, контрасти – нелепа смърт в хотелски басейн, премиера на книга в месокомбинат, пищен прием със сватбената торта на Ема Бовари, устроен от далечен роднина на Флобер, женско сексуално отмъщение на язвителен критик, бягство отвъд желязната завеса и небезизвестен чадър…

С присъщото си дръзко остроумие и изобретателност, с тънък хумор, ирония и на места пародия Дубравка Угрешич разгръща един многопластов, мултикултурен роман река за литературата и писателското поприще, постмодернистична картина на двата свята от близкото минало през погледа на онези, които ги претворяват в художествена фикция.

I read and loved The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, a fragmented metafictional work also by Ugresic. Given the title of this book, I thought it would also be experimental/metafictional. However, the plot is fairly linear. It takes place over several days at a writers’ conference in Zagreb and follows the lives of some of the participants. This certainly seems tamer, but I ended up liking it for different reasons. The novel was still well written – with one exception, will get to that in a bit – and I found most of the characters understandable if not necessarily sympathetic. There was enough crazy to satisfy me also.

The conference opens inauspiciously when a Spanish poet dies in a swimming accident. From there, the author describes the thoughts, problems and lives of the conference attendees – Pipo, an insecure Croatian writer, Jan, a gloomy Czech who has brought his masterpiece to hand off, the irritated Minister in charge of the conference who would really rather be with his mistress, self-absorbed Prsa, a self-important Frenchman and two alienated Soviet writers. There’s not much time spent at the talks; instead the author focuses on conversations between the characters as well as some bizarre events that take place during off-hours. There’s theft, murder, sabotage and critic-torture, some of which is orchestrated by the “Dr. No of literature”.

Despite the occasionally over-the-top events, the string-pulling evil genius, and characters that can be a bit one-dimensional (the snobby Frenchman, the angry feminist), I thought it was a good book. The sections with the Minister and his randy mistress Vanda were silly fun and there were enjoyably random comic bits, like a scene where the conference participants try to name exotic deaths of famous writers or an outing to a sausage factory where the others sarcastically suggest a sausage named after Prsa. Descriptions of the authors’ thoughts and feelings were well done. Pipo’s fear that he’s being left behind as all his friends marry and have kids and his worries over the paucity of his output were deftly depicted even though the character could be a bit whiny. Jan’s lacerating guilt and the Russian Troshin’s desire to defect were also effectively portrayed.

I liked Ugresic’s style except for one annoying habit - lots of penis euphemisms. After a while, I just rolled my eyes when someone’s “wand”, “pendant” or “stingray” was mentioned. Most of these occurred in the Vanda/Minister chapters, which makes sense in the context, but it was overdone.

The crazy parts were often the result of one of the character’s evil master plan to control the production of all literature and turn it into a pile of homogenized, conformist crap. His plan makes one think of all the “official” literature coming out of various repressive regimes but also some current trends in publishing. When he mentions “third-rate speed writers” inflating the value of literature, I could only think of the “James Pattersons” writing books by “James Patterson”. The idea of “cloned stories, cloned novels” could not only be authors jumping on the latest hot trend, but also the computer programs that cobble together information from the internet to make a poorly put together book that’s then sold online. With computers controlling both the content and criticism of literature – digital books were brought to mind (don’t really exist and can be changed infinite times) as well as programs for analysis. Very prescient. ( )