The Ministry of Pain: A Novel

Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&M clothing at a sweatshop they call the "Ministry." Abandoning literature, Tanja encourages her students to indulge their "Yugonostalgia" in essays about their personal experiences during their homeland's cultural and physical disintegration. But Tanja's act of academic rebellion incites the rage of one renegade member of her class—and pulls her dangerously close to another—which, in turn, exacerbates the tensions of a life in exile that has now begun to spiral seriously out of control.

Abandoned by her husband in Berlin after being forced into exile by the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic seeks sanctuary in the Department of Slavonic Language at the University of Amsterdam, where she and her fellow displaced students struggle to confront their traumatic memories of their homeland. By the author of The Museum of Unconditional Surrender. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.