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NightAuthor: Vedrana Rudan Translator: Celia Hawkesworth Eastern European Literature Series November 2004 214 pages, 5.25 x 8.5 Paperback, 1-56478-347-2 Retail Paperback Price: Our Paperback Price: $11.16 
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Book Description
Not since Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Ferdinand Bardamu has a character appeared in fiction with such a bitter, ironic, hysterically ranting voice. Tonka—a fifty-something woman spending the night watching TV before leaving her husband for a younger man—rails against all of society, from attacks on America to complaints about commercials, from the passive nature of most married women to the way corporations control the world.
With shocking honesty and anger, she pours out her soul to an imaginary audience, interspersing her rants with the story of her difficult life, the suffering experienced during the Yugoslav war, and the affairs she and her best friend have with the same man.
An unforgettable invective, Night marks the emergence of an exciting new voice in contemporary fiction.
About the Author
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Vedrana Rudan was born in 1949 in Opatia, Croatia. She was a columnist for a major Croatian daily newspaper until she lost her job for opposing the ruling government. She is also the author of a second novel, Love at Last Sight. Night was adapted for the stage and performed in Serbia. |
About the Translator
| Celia Hawkesworth was Senior Lecturer in Serbian and Croatian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London until her retirement. She has published numerous articles and several books on Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian literature, including a study Ivo Andric: Bridge between East and West, Athlone Press, London, 1984 and Voices in the Shadows: Women and Verbal Art in Serbia and Bosnia, CEU Press, Budapest, 2000. She has also published numerous translations, including several works by Ivo Andric and Dubravka Ugresic. |
Praise
"From time to time the author offers us laughter as a temporary relief from this grotesque life, and occasionally we get lulled into believing that she feels for us as members of minority groups, women, victims, but on the next page we get something like a punch in the stomach . . . Nowadays nobody writes as ferociously as Vedrana Rudan."—Nada Gasic"Vedrana Rudan's first novel is a picturesque, unpretentious, ironic-satiric narrative, in which the tragic elements are succeeded by comic episodes, and in which a sharp style and vocabulary serve a singular purpose of diagnosing the Croatian reality."—Sanja Domazet, Danas