Natalija


Book Description

The life story of a Serbian woman over a period of more than 70 years, preserved in memoirs, letters and mostly diaries, recounts the triumphs and tragedies of a life that takes place against the backdrop of extraordinary turbulence in the Balkans. It covers more than half a century, five wars (including the two world wars), and four ideologies. Accompanied by an introductory study, Natalija's diary provides a rich background to understanding the on-going conflict in the Balkans.




Raiders of the Lost Corset


Book Description

Bursting at the seams with excitement to be in France, Crimes of Fashion columnist Lacy Smithsonian is dishing the dirt on haute couture, only to find herself up to her stillettos in mystery when the supposed Rousseau family lost treasure, a jewel-lined corset, brings about the death of a corset designer. Original.




Narratives of Exile and Identity


Book Description

In an innovative effort to situate Baltic testimonies to the Gulag in the broader international context of research on displacement and memory, scholars from the Baltic States, Western Europe, Canada, and the United States seek answers to the following questions: Do different groups of deportees experience deportation differently? How do the accounts of women, children and men differ in their representation? Do various ethnic groups remember the past differently: how do they use historical and cultural paradigms to structure their experience in unique ways? The scholars researched the archives, read testimonies, interviewed former deportees, and examined artifacts of memory produced since the late 1980s, applying crossdisciplinary approaches used at the study of the Holocaust testimonies; the testimonies of women have received a particular emphasis. The essays in the book also examine the issues of transmittance, commemoration and public uses of the memory of deportations in contemporary social, cultural and political contexts of Baltic societies, including the reflection of Gulag legacy in literature, the cinema and museums.




The Hidden History of New Women in Serbian Culture


Book Description

Settled in the nineteenth century, a period of national liberation, this book presents facts about the contribution of women to Serbian culture. The story is, however, of an equal contemporary as well as of historical relevance: work of these authors remained hidden as they were neither adequately evaluated in school curriculums and textbooks, nor recognized by the general public. Does the absence from textbooks and literary histories imply their literature is not worth reading? Or, that the histories of literature are simply biased and inadequate? The answers to these questions are elaborated in this book. The author carefully investigates the strategies of historians and official politics of remembrance, arguing that the link between women's education and emancipation of the society has yet to be properly explained. The reader, whether a student, researcher, social scientist, or an intellectual interested in the history, social development, literature, or politics of Serbia, or the Balkan in general, will benefit from the numerous original sources consulted. This book is a reminder that understanding society means uncovering the hidden and giving voice to the ignored, providing evidence that contradicts dominant theories, rather than simply repeating what we are told.




Veiled Revenge


Book Description

Home of the helmet hairdo and congressional comb-over, Washington, D.C., is a hotbed of fashion faux pas. If anyone should know, it’s “Crimes of Fashion” columnist Lacey Smithsonian. She dishes out advice to the scandal-scorched and clothing-clueless, doing her part to change this town—one fashion victim at a time.... SHAWL TALE Washington, D.C., fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian has always believed clothes can be magical, but she’s never thought they can be cursed. Until now. Lacey’s best friend, Stella, is finally getting married, and at her bachelorette party, fellow bridesmaid—and fortune-teller—Marie Largesse arrives with a stunning Russian shawl. A shawl, Marie warns, that can either bless or curse the wearer. When a party crasher who mocks the shawl is found dead the next day, the other guests fear the curse has been unleashed. But Lacey has her doubts, and she must employ all her Extra-Fashionary Perception to capture a villain who has vowed that nobody at this wedding will live happily ever after….




History as Performance


Book Description

This study analyzes history as performance: as the interaction of actors, plays, stages and enactments. By this, it examines women’s politics in Habsburg Galicia around 1900: a Polish woman active in the peasant movement, a Ukrainian feminist, and a Jewish Zionist. It shows how the movements constructed essentialistically regarded collectives, experience as a medially comprehensible form of credibility, and a historically based inevitability of change, and legitimized participation and intervention through social policy and educational practices. Traits shared by the movements included the claim to interpretive sovereignty, the ritualization of participation, and the establishment of truths about past and future.




Water Covers All Sins


Book Description

Water Covers All Sins James Marsh Banksiadale was an idyllic timber mill town, near Dwellingup and Pinjarra, in the south-west of Western Australia. In its heyday and climaxing in the early 1960s, it was the gem of all mill towns with its own electricity supply, piped fresh water to all houses and a peaceful, well-behaved community, not even needing a resident policeman. Today, it does not exist. Everything changed in 1963 when the mill mysteriously burnt down, all workers had to leave, and the mill houses were swallowed up and covered by the waters of a new dam, the South Dandalup dam. Other problems emerged when it was discovered some 40 years later that two local residents had been murdered and disposed of in a mill house which was submerged along with other buildings when the dam was fl ooded. Three detectives have to work painstakingly on various clues to try to track down the killers in this cold case.




Duda


Book Description

Mexico, 1970. The world celebrates its first three time World Cup champion. Gabriel, however, has little to celebrate. Brazil, 2013. Duda, a successful sports marketing executive, is called to a meeting that will change his life. Sofia, his love of many years, and Edson, his friend and star/captain of the Brazilian national team take the news in very distinct ways when Duda calls and proposes something that will change the soccer world forever. FIFA and sponsors are not enthusiastic, but little by little Duda finds allies and his idea takes shape. Meanwhile, Natalija, an attractive and successful independent journalist has moved to Rio to follow a lead on the story of another prize that will be disputed at the World Cup. Everything is on track until Duda travels to Mexico City. Brazil, June 12, 2014. After the inauguration ceremony, Brazils national team takes the pitch and on TV all one can see are thousands of shimmers of light Natalija smiled because she knew that he knew that she knew about soccer. She smiled because he looked at her like in that way, on this beautiful May afternoon, on this beautiful terrace next to the ocean, and she was sharing this moment with a beautiful man who not only knew about soccer, and knew that she knew about soccer, but who was so interested in her that he said nothing about it. She smiled because it had been so long since she had been in the presence of a man she was interested in; she had felt it the moment they met, even though he was exactly the opposite of her type. He drives a Porsche for Christs sake! she had thought playfully.




Miss Ex-Yugoslavia


Book Description

A “funny and tragic and beautiful in all the right places” (Jenny Lawson, #1 New York Times bestseller author of Furiously Happy) memoir about the immigrant experience and life as a perpetual fish-out-of-water, from the acclaimed Serbian-Australian storyteller. Sofija Stefanovic makes the first of many awkward entrances in 1982, when she is born in socialist Yugoslavia. The circumstances of her birth (a blackout, gasoline shortages, bickering parents) don’t exactly get her off to a running start. While around her, ethnic tensions are stoked by totalitarian leaders with violent agendas, Stefanovic’s early life is filled with Yugo rock, inadvisable crushes, and the quirky ups and downs of life in a socialist state. As the political situation grows more dire, the Stefanovics travel back and forth between faraway, peaceful Australia, where they can’t seem to fit in, and their turbulent homeland, which they can’t seem to shake. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia collapses into the bloodiest European conflict in recent history. Featuring warlords and beauty queens, tiger cubs and Baby-Sitters Clubs, Sofija Stefanovic’s memoir is a window to a complicated culture that she both cherishes and resents. Revealing war and immigration from the crucial viewpoint of women and children, Stefanovic chronicles her own coming-of-age, both as a woman and as an artist. Refreshingly candid, poignant, and illuminating, “Stefanovic’s story is as unique and wacky as it is important” (Esquire).




Emir Kusturica


Book Description

Emir Kusturica is one of Eastern Europe's most celebrated and influential filmmakers. Over the course of a thirty-year career, Kusturica has navigated a series of geopolitical fault lines to produce subversive, playful, often satiric works. On the way he won acclaim and widespread popularity while showing a genius for adjusting his poetic pitch--shifting from romantic realist to controversial satirist to sentimental jester. Leading scholar-critic Giorgio Bertellini divides Kusturica's career into three stages--dissention, disconnection, and dissonance--to reflect both the historic and cultural changes going on around him and the changes his cinema has undergone. He uses Kusturica's Palme d'Or winning Underground (1995)--the famously inflammatory take on Yugoslav history after World War II--as the pivot between the tone of romantic, yet pungent critique of the director's early works and later journeys into Balkanist farce marked by slapstick and a self-conscious primitivism. Eschewing the one-sided polemics Kusturica's work often provokes, Bertellini employs balanced discussion and critical analysis to offer a fascinating and up-to-date consideration of a major figure in world cinema.