Dubravka Ugresic is one of the most important writers of fiction in contemporary Croatian literature. Two related features dominate her work: parody and irony, which convey, respectively, the essentially postmodern content and the style of her work. The leitmotiv running through her fiction is that nothing is what it seems or is projected to be. Ugresic's fiction is characterized by a thorough knowledge of her craft and of the literary heritage of the Western world and its most recent manifestations. She moves freely in this context, using parody and intertextual reference as her tools. The immediate surface impression of her works is their engaging wit, their playful mockery of the "high seriousness" of Literature with a capital L. The mockery is all-encompassing and therefore includes herself: she is present in most of her works as the author who is subjected to the same ironic treatment as her characters...