A Muzzle for Witches

Praise for Dubravka Ugresic:

"Splendidly ambitious. . . . A brilliant, enthralling spread of storytelling and high-velocity reflections. . . . She is a writer to follow. A writer to be cherished."—Susan Sontag

"A madcap wit and a lively sense of the absurd. . . . Filled with ingenious invention and surreal incident."—Marina Warner

"Dubravka Ugresic is the philosopher of evil and exile, and the storyteller of many shattered lives the wars in the former Yugoslavia produced. . . . This is an utterly original, beautiful, and supremely intelligent novel."—Charles Simic

"Ugresic is also affecting and eloquent, in part because within her quirky, aggressively sweet plot she achieves moments of profundity and evokes the stoicism innate in such moments."—Mary Gaitskill

"Never has a writer been more aware of how one narrative depends on another."—Joanna Walsh

"Ugresic is unbeatable at explaining the inexplicable entanglements of Balkan cultural traditions, particularly as they relate to the hellish position of women."—Clive James

"Ugresic must be numbered among what Jacques Maritain called the dreamers of the true; she draws us into the dream."—New York Times

"Ugresic's recent work [is] veery Central European in form, a collage of essays, sketches, feuilletons, numbered aperçus, reminiscent of the best non-fiction of Danilo Kiš or György Konrád. She is brave in denouncing the perversions of political and cultural life in Croatia, but also wonderfully ironical about the quasi-heroic roles in which she find herself now unwillingly cast. The book is subtle, funny, and clear-eyed."—Timothy Garton-Ash