Four books by writers from Croatia, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with On the Edge of Reason and Belladonna.
Marko Marulić of Split published the epic poem Judita in 1521, a cornerstone of Croatian literature. Ivan Gundulić of Dubrovnik wrote the baroque epic Osman in the seventeenth century, and the Baška tablet, carved around 1100 in the Glagolitic alphabet, is among the oldest Croatian inscriptions. In the twentieth century Miroslav Krleža was a towering figure; his novel On the Edge of Reason shows a Zagreb lawyer ruined by an offhand remark at a dinner.
Much recent writing returns to the Second World War and the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Daša Drndić's Belladonna, written in Croatian, has an ageing writer reflecting on memory and forgetting, while her Leica Format is a fragmentary, documentary-style novel of loss. Slavko Goldstein's 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning tells of the terror of the wartime Ustasha regime through his family and his Jewish father.
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A Zagreb lawyer's offhand remark at a dinner destroys his standing, exposing the hypocrisy of the interwar Croatian bourgeoisie.
An ageing Croatian writer reflects on memory, the Second World War, the Yugoslav wars and forgetting, with Zagreb and the Adriatic coast in the background.
A fragmentary, documentary-style novel of memory and loss in Croatia, drawing on the region's twentieth-century upheavals and Zagreb life.
A memoir-history of the 1941 Ustasha terror in Croatia, told through the author's family's experience and the fate of his Jewish father.
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