The Ministry of Pain

This novel by the Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic examines the lives of exiles without a country to return to: the former Yugoslavia. Set in Holland, a flat land that absorbs pains of the past like a blotter, as the author neatly puts it, the story follows a Croat language and literature teacher and her Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian pupils as they attempt to navigate a limbo in which they cannot be truly at home anywhere. This is the type of novel -- sincere yet knowing -- that reconfirms to me that the best literature is being practiced far from American shores these days.