From Post-Yugoslavia to the Female Continent: A Feminist Reading of Post-Yugoslav Literature

Tijana Matijević lectures on post-Yugoslav literature, culture, and languages at two European universities, and this monograph reflects her expertise while consolidating her previous research. The book attempts to examine contemporary literature from the regions of former Yugoslavia through the lens of feminist analysis and also in the light of its theorized connections with the Yugoslav neo-avant-garde. It expands and redefines existing concepts (such as the idea of post-Yugoslavia as a liminal socio-political space defined, in Bhabha's phrasing, as 'the time never completely beyond' (p. 8)) while introducing new notions (such as framing and understanding the literary landscapes of today's Yugoslavia as a 'female continent'). As such, this book represents a nuanced integration of literary and feminist analysis applied to several key texts, including the Serbian author Slobodan Tišman's Bernardijeva Saba (Bernardi's Room, 2011) and the Croatian writer Olja Savićević Ivančević's Adio, Kauboju (Adios Cowboy, 2010). It is carefully researched and meticulously argued, if a little densely worded at times. Matijević engages ambitiously with various theoretical fields, which underpin her close textual and interdisciplinary analysis of the primary sources examined in Chapters 2-6. While Western scholars may not be familiar with all of the authors discussed here, as they are not widely known outside the Balkan region (with a few notable exceptions such as Dasa Drndić), Matijević's comparative approach makes her study relevant for non-specialists as well as regional experts