num_pages: 272
description: Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&amp;M clothing at a sweatshop they call the "Ministry." Abandoning literature, Tanja encourages her students to indulge their "Yugonostalgia" in essays about their personal experiences during their homeland's cultural and physical disintegration. But Tanja's act of academic rebellion incites the rage of one renegade member of her class—and pulls her dangerously close to another—which, in turn, exacerbates the tensions of a life in exile that has now begun to spiral seriously out of control.
language: English
title: The Ministry of Pain
titlecomplete: The Ministry of Pain
genres: European Literature, 21st Century, Female Authors, Novels, Historical Fiction, Literature, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Fiction, Politics
ratings_count: 1841
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
category: Shortlist, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Angelus
publisher: Ecco