Dubravka in The Telegraph

Our own Dubravka Ugresic has an essay in this week’s Telegraph:

A 10-year-old nephew of mine recently spent his Easter holidays with me in Amsterdam. I took him to the Anne Frank Museum.

bq. He had never heard of Anne Frank. I tried to recall whether I had known of her when I was his age. Then my childhood diary came to mind. I had written to an imaginary friend in my diary and that imaginary friend’s name was Anne Frank.

bq. Last year I spent two months teaching students of comparative literature at a German university. I was free to speak on whatever I liked. I soon realised that out of a natural desire to help the students follow me I was turning my lectures into a list of footnotes.

bq. My students knew who Lacan and Derrida were, but the number of books they had read was astonishingly small. I would mention a name such as Czeslaw Milosz. My students did not know of Czeslaw Milosz. I would give them a word such as samizdat. It meant nothing to them.

A slightly different version of this essay will appear in Nobody’s Home, a collection of Dubravka’s essays we’re publishing this fall.