Translated from the original Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac, Celia Hawkesworth, and Mark Thompson.

Dubravka Ugresic was born in 1949 in Croatia. She worked for twenty years at the Institute for Theory of Literature at Zagreb University, successfully pursuing parallel careers as a writer and a literary scholar. She started writing professionally with screenplays for children's television programs, as an undergraduate. In 1971 she published her first book for children, which was awarded a prestigious Croatian literary prize for children's literature. In 1991, when the war broke out in the former Yugoslavia, Ugresic took a firm anti-nationalistic stand and consequently an anti-war stand. She started to write critically about nationalism (both Croatian and Serbian), the stupidity and criminality of war, and soon became a target of the nationalistically charged media. She was proclaimed a 'traitor', a 'public enemy' and a 'witch', ostracised and exposed to harsh and persistent media harassment. She left Croatia in 1993. Dubravka Ugresic has continued writing since she began living abroad. She has published both novels and books of essays. Ugresic's essays have appeared in American (Context, The Hedgehog Review) and European newspapers and magazines (Vrij Nederland, Die Zeit, Die Welt Woche and many others). She teaches occasionally at American and European universities. Her books have been translated into more then twenty languages and she has received several major European literary awards. She is now based in Amsterdam and works as a freelance writer.