Have a Nice Day

Dubravka Ugresic, Croatia's greatest living writer, wrote this collection of newspaper articles, subtitled "From the Balkan War to the American Dream," in America after leaving her inflamed homeland in the early 1990s. Asked why she did not stay to record the wars of ex-Yugoslavia, she answered simply: "I'm afraid of blood." The essays dissect life in New York and Connecticut in the clear-eyed method of the outsider: with no illusions, many generalizations, and all the while aiming for connections to the deserted homeland. Some of the pieces have a microscopic, Dos Passos quality of observation. Others are lyrical. There is even humor. Through it all, Ugresic manages to achieve the rare effect of unintentional moral superiority.