num_pages: 230
description: Hurtling between Weltschmerz and wit drollness and diatribe entropy and enchantment its the juxtaposition at the heart of Dubravka Ugresics writings that saw Ruth Franklin dub her the fantasy cultural studies professor you never had. In Europe in Sepia Ugresic ever the flneur wanders from the Midwest to Zuccotti Park the Irish Aran Islands to Jerusalems Mea Shearim from the tristesse of Dutch housing estates to the riots of south London charting everything from the listlessness of Central Europe to the ennui of the Low Countries. One finger on the pulse of an exhausted Europe another in the wounds of postindustrial America Ugresic trawls the fallout of political failure and the detritus of popular culture mining each for revelation.Infused with compassion and melancholic doubt Europe in Sepia centers on the disappearance of the future the anxiety that no new utopian visions have emerged from the ruins of communism; that ours is a time of irreducible nostalgia our surrender to pastism complete. Punctuated by the levity of Ugresics raucous instinct for the absurd despair has seldom been so beguiling.
language: English
title: Europe in Sepia
publisher: Open Letter