Summary of The Ministry of Pain
“The Ministry of Pain” tells the story of Tanja, an exile from Zagreb, who teaches “Yugoslav” literature and languages to her students, all Yugoslav exiles, barely younger than herself, at a university in Amsterdam. As the war tribunal in The Hague proceeds, Tanja and her students reflect on their memories of life in Yugoslavia, with her classes resembling group therapy sessions more than traditional university courses. Simultaneously, a romantic relationship starts to develop between Tanja and one of her students.
Reasons to read The Ministry of Pain
“The Ministry of Pain” is a novel about the exile experience of a group of Yugoslav refugees in Amsterdam during the late 1990s. Dubravka Ugrešić was a celebrated Yugoslavian writer, who lived in Amsterdam for many years and won numerous literary prizes, including the Yugoslavian NIN Award, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, the Heinrich Mann Prize, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Setting: Amsterdam (the Netherlands)
Original title: Ministarstvo boli
Year of publication: 2004
Nr of pages: 272
