The voice of Dubravka Ugresić is the voice of contemporary Europe. Her words echo far beyond the borders of her native Croatia to shake the deepest certainties of the West. For if death and destruction have all too literally ravaged the former Yugoslavia, the resulting moral shock waves have set all intellectual Europe adrift.

In this urgent alarm call to her country and her continent, Ugresic shows us the jagged shards of a civilisation shattered, its pieces sharp with insight and glinting with wicked irony. This book is as dazzling as it is disturbing, as passionate as it is brave.