The Museum of Unconditional Surrender

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 of a group of characters living in Berlin and Lisbon.

Ugresic 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.

This work is underpinned by a calm note of tragedy. "The Museum of Unconditional Surrender" is a beautifully written novel, both bitter and funny in tone.