The museum of unconditional surrender - Dubravka Ugresic

An unusual beautifully written East European novel in the tradition of Kundera and Borges. This is a deeply East European novel in flavour reminiscent of Kundera and Borges. Through weaving together fragments, stories and diaries Dubravka Ugresic, a prize winning novelist in the former Yugoslavia, captures the world group of characters living in Berlin and Lisbon. Even though this is a novel with little plot, there is something extremely compelling and memorable about Ugresic's beautifully crafted writing. She convincingly brings to life a world and characters preoccupied by questions of exile, Nationalism, angels, parables, the Berlin zoo, the layers of meaning in one's past and future frozen by the camera. Underpinned by a calm note of tragedy, The museum of Unconditional surrender is a beautifully written novel, both bitter and funny in tone.