In the early 90s as war raged in the Balkans and Yugoslavia was splintering, Dubravka Ugresic arrived in Middletown, Connecticut, taking up a temporary teaching post at Wesleyan University. American Fictionary (Open Letter) is her series of reports from the strange land of American academia and suburbia, where she ponders fixations with jogging, bagels, and organizers, among other things, while worrying over friends and family back in Zagreb. Ugresic, winner of the 2016 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, has a way of freely navigating themes and registers—she can swing effortlessly between comic vignettes and musings on American kitsch to deeper, essayistic pieces on melancholy, exile, and the loss of her homeland. First published in English almost 25 years ago as Have a Nice Day: From the Balkan War to the American Dream, the collection has been tweaked and updated, with a new epilogue that adds poignant perspective to both the dissolution of her country and the increasing threats to our own. (Amazon)

Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth and Ellen Elias-Bursać.