Although it has taken the English translation of this collection of essays a few years to come into print (it was first published in Dutch),this is a highly relevant, illuminating, and moving book. Most of the essays were written between '92 and '94, with more recent postscripts. With rare clarity and complexity of thought, gift of articulation, emotional courage and absence of pretence or squeamishness, Ugresic has carried out a highly accessible investigation into the Yugoslav war, the demise of communist Europe, the East-West polarity, the ambiguities of exile. With references to other East European writers and thinkers (Milan Kundera, Miroslav Krleja, Danilo Kis, Josiph Brodsky), she explores the tyranny of the new constructs of national identity in the Balkan states, the enforced collective amnesia of the former Yugoslavs, the many traumas of their history, as well as the common psycho-cultural lanscape of the 'Eastern block'. There are many deeply moving episodes and revealing insights here, delivered in the familiar 'Central European' style of ironic, melancholic, bitter humanism. Vaguely reminiscent of Milan Kundera, only better because of the lack of smugness and the final doubting humility of someone who has felt intense pain and articulated the nature of this pain.