Daša Drndić

Daša Drndić (10 August 1946, Zagreb – 5 June 2018, Rijeka) was a Croatian writer. She studied English language and literature at the University of Belgrade.[1]

Drndić obtained a master's degree in theatre and communications from Southern Illinois University in the United States, which she attended with the aid of a Fulbright scholarship.[2] She studied at Case Western Reserve University. In the early 1990s, she moved from Belgrade to Rijeka,[2] and obtained her doctorate at the University of Rijeka, where she later taught. She worked for many years in the drama department of Radio Belgrade, writing and producing numerous radio plays during that time. She also worked in publishing.[2] In 2017, she has signed the Declaration on the Common Language of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins.[3]

The author of a number of books, Drndić is best known for her award-winning novel Sonnenschein (2007) which has been translated in many languages. It appeared in English translation under the title Trieste; the translator was Ellen Elias-Bursać. It was nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. An earlier novel, Leica Format, was translated by Celia Hawkesworth and published by MacLehose Press.[4] In 2017, her penultimate novel, Belladonna, was published in English by MacLehose Press and New Directions Publishing (also translated by Hawkesworth). An English translation by Hawkesworth and Susan Curtis of Drndić's earlier work Doppelgänger was published in Great Britain by Istros Books in 2018, and in the United States by New Directions in 2019.[5]. Her last book, EEG, translated into English by Celia Hawkesworth, was published by MacLehose Press in the UK and New Directions in the US in 2019. EEG won the Best Translated Book Award in 2020.

Death

Drndić died on 5 June 2018 in Rijeka, aged 71, after a two-year battle with cancer.[6][7]

Selected works[2]

• Put do subote (1982). Way to Saturday.
• Kamen s neba (1984). Stone from Heaven.
• Marija Częstohowska još uvijek roni suze ili Umiranje u Torontu (1997). Maria Częstohowska Still Shedding Tears or Dying in Toronto.
• Canzone di guerra (1998).
• Totenwande (2000).
• Doppelgänger (2002). Translated by S.D. Curtis and Celia Hawkesworth (Istros Books/New Directions, 2019).
• Leica format (2003). Translated by Celia Hawkesworth (MacLehose Press, 2015).
• Trieste (2007). Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać (MacLehose Press/Harcourt, 2012).
• April u Berlinu (2009). April in Berlin.
• Belladonna (2012). Translated by Celia Hawkesworth (MacLehose Press/New Directions, 2017).
• EEG (2016). Translated by Celia Hawkesworth (MacLehose Press/New Directions, 2019).

References

1. Profile, fraktura.hr; accessed 6 June 2018.(in Croatian)
2. "ODLAZAK DAŠE DRNDIĆ Bila je intelektualka koja nije marila za visoke tiraže. Čitatelje je izazivala, a kritičari su je obožavali..." Jutarnji list (in Croatian). 6 June 2018. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
3. Derk, Denis (28 March 2017). "Donosi se Deklaracija o zajedničkom jeziku Hrvata, Srba, Bošnjaka i Crnogoraca" [A Declaration on the Common Language of Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins is About to Appear] (in Serbo-Croatian). Zagreb: Večernji list. pp. 6–7. ISSN 0350-5006. Archived from the original on 23 May 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
4. "Celia Hawkesworth profile". Retrieved 15 September 2017.
5. Sehgal, Parul (24 December 2019). "In Gory, Majestic Fiction, a Hard Look at the Holocaust’s Stubborn Silences (review of Doppelgänger). New York Times. Retrieved 25 December 2019. Print version, 25 December 2019, p. C10.
6. Flood, Alison (6 June 2018). "Daša Drndić, 'unflinching' Croatian novelist, dies aged 71". the Guardian.
7. Komunikacije, Neomedia. "ODLAZAK VELIKE KNJIŽEVNICE U Rijeci preminula Daša Drndić / Novi list". www.novilist.hr.