Berlin in 'The Museum of Unconditional Surrender'

Ruins covered with indifferent grass

Abstract

This article studies how The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, a Dubravka Ugrešić’s novel published in 1997, makes it possible to think through the city of Berlin the situation of Europe during the Cold War and after the Fall of the Wall, the dissolution of the USSR and the dawn of the Yugoslav wars. Paying attention to Ugrešić’s book as well as to other contemporary artists’ works, this investigation will especially focus on the use of stratification as a narrative device that allows several reflections about the overlapped temporal layers that can be found in certain spaces or objects.