British critics have recently mourned the paucity of international fiction that is filtered through native publishing houses. Dubravka Ugresic was one of such authors recommended as deserving considerable attention.
Ugresic is Croatian born and part of an ethnically diverse family. She left her native land for political reasons. This work is a politically charged kaleidoscope of social and moral sketches permeated with lyrical, poetic episodes, many of them surreal, all of them stirring.
The Museum of Unconditional Surrender begins with a catalogue of items found in the belly of Roland the Walrus, all of which are exhibited at the Berlin zoo. These fragments are poignantly mirrored in the narrative that follows as the lives of the characters are explored through fragmentary memories, stories and images with seemingly scarce coherence. A general chronology of events can be gradually pieced together but the effect of a scattered and multi-voiced narration arouses the sense of frustration and confusion that the characters themselves endure in the midst of a war torn world.
This war is in fact a direct reference to the situation in Eastern Europe in the early 1990's. The novel traces roughly (though not always chronologically), the lives of several protagonists and their changing situations through life and through the conflict they are inescapably a part of. Unsurprisingly, the stories are diverse not just in sentiment and content but in terms of their supposed location as each are thrown hither and thither wherever the war dictates.
Problems of identity and belonging are powerfully evoked in the bitterness of the scattered voices. The museum is a constant theme, where biographies and experiences are displayed in a circus-like exhibition and the poignancy of loss and exile constantly flourish. An elusive and yet rooted thread ties the characters together, whose fleeting experiences and chance meetings are all plotted on the wider web that is the novel itself; as indeed the distinct objects find themselves together in the belly of the walrus at the museum. This layering effect is a technique used throughout, though far from collapsing into a clichéd 'tale within a tale', Ugresic's subtlety and skill instead weaves a profoundly rich and complex multi-structured story that masterfully combines the sum of its parts.
The novel is richly textured. From the cataloguist nature of the first and last chapters to the more biographical anecdotal quality of the middle chapters, the book bravely pushes the limits of conventional prose and with immense success. Equally triumphant are the diverse plot strands that bring one from the surreal tale of an angel offering gifts of pubic feathers to the woman sipping tea in the bath with her cat blankly hoping to keep safe while the bombs and gunfire rage outside her window. Bathos-rich and lyrical in its expression, the story is a desperate struggle to find coherence and unity as those of whom it speaks strive to do the same. Desperation, suicide, love, and loss all function to weave a deeply potent story of exile and self discovery. A strong recommendation, and one that I think would satisfy numerous tastes.
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