Cafe Europa: Life After Communism | 
 enlarge | Author: Slavenka Drakulic
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 68644
Media: Paperback
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0140277722
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.0947
EAN: 9780140277722
ASIN: 0140277722
Publication Date: February 1, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Today in Eastern Europe the architectural work of revolution is complete: the old order has been replaced by various forms of free market economy and de jure democracy. But as Slavenka Drakulic observes, "in everyday life, the revolution consists much more of the small things-- of sounds, looks and images." In this brilliant work of political reportage, filtered through her own experience, we see that Europe remains a divided continent. In the place of the fallen Berlin Wall there is a chasm between East and West, consisting of the different way people continue to live and understand the world. Little bits--or intimations--of the West are gradually making their way east: boutiques carrying Levis and tiny food shops called "Supermarket" are multiplying on main boulevards. Despite the fact that Drakulic can find a Cafe Europa, complete with Viennese-style coffee and Western decor, in just about every Eastern European city, the acceptance of the East by the rest of Europe continues to prove much more elusive.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 East and West...The Differences August 23, 2007
Joseph Wayne Heckert (Harrisburg, PA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Slavenka Drakulic is both a skilled writer and a capable interpreter of the human condition. Cafe Europa is not a standard history text; rather it is a collection of related articles that reveal the attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors of individuals who have lived in both the communist world as well as the post-communist period. Drakulic is a great travel companion with a keen feel for the people that she writes about. I approached the book expecting a useful social commentary and found it to be both enlightening and difficult to put down. Anyone who wants to truly understand this part of the world needs to read this one!
Scintillating review of the post-Communist world... May 12, 2006
Adam Mezei (Prague, Czech Republic)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
...which still applicable today, several years since the original publishing of Drakulic's amazing book.
For someone such as myself who's spent a great deal of time in the post-Communist former Bloc, I indentified very strongly with the views put forth by this author. I hasten to add that such identification was instantaneous.
I also learned a heck of a lot; a great deal more, in fact than I thought I knew at the outset, and especially about Croatia and its storied past (the author is Croatian -- Istrian, in fact -- and quite impressively knows the history of her nation and of the former Yugoslavia more generally, like the back of her hand). I wish I had that kind of accessible knowledge. I'm humbled...
Were I able to speak to the author today, I'd probe her for her latest reflections on several of the ideas she put forth almost a decade ago. I'd even attempt to cajole her to pen a sequel...so much has changed, and the instability (sometimes constructive, though more often explosive) has continued to pummel and plague and thereby radically alter the identities of many of these newly democratic states. I'm sure what was the case in 1995 is no longer extant in many of these nations...
Drakulic is deliciously bold in this compact non-fictional winner. She refuses to accept Croatia's latter day nationalistic dogmas and the 'superiority slogans' bandied about by her patriotic peers. Within Cafe Europa's pages, she refuses to accept anything glibly declared by her compatriots 'for granted,' and there remain no sacred cows, and no stones unturned: everything is up for discussion, every so-called truth is up for grabs. For that reason alone, I'd personally have to say her credibility is unassailable.
You might wonder whether what awards someone such 'instant credibility' is in their willingness to lambaste the conventional wisdom of their relevant societies -- to wit, if Drakulic wasn't as willing to chisel away at what Croatians think makes them tick, would she be any less credible? I don't know. That wasn't the tack she took, therefore hard to judge her work on that basis...I suppose what I'm really trying to say in a roundabout way is that I don't have anything against Croatians, and just because she was willing to bash her compatriots doesn't make her any more credible in my eyes. It's not a prerequisite for credibility...having that said that, her candour is yet quite impressive.
Fascinating how so many inspiring factoids were contained in this short and spirited read.
It ended way too soon, Cafe Europa did...now that another decade's passed, I think the time's come for perhaps a revisiting of this theme?
Five-stars all the way.
Balkan mentality September 15, 2005
Medina (Florida)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Excellent book, Slavenka Drakulic is very perceptive and understands Balkan mentality better than anybody. I really enjoyed reading this book, and other books from Drakulic as well. Sometimes, it seems like Drakulic is balancing between two worlds-one of reality and the other of fantasy. Very good reading and it will give you an insight into the minds of people living in parts of Southeast Europe.
 Not bad, but could have been better August 19, 2005
D. L. Clement (Boston, MA)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
The first few essays in Drakulic's book are a disappointment. You must wade through pages of materialistic babble (for example, paragraphs on all of the consumer goods she buys in western Europe for the material-hungry people back home) and shallow feelings of insecurity that she shares with her readers (as in, she feels as though her husband will question their marriage simply because her passport is not as powerful as his). But once you reach the essays further on in the book, you may find something of interest to you that falls in to the politics/essays category into which this book has been placed. Drakulic often writes with a sassy, angry tone which is unbecoming. All in all, the book is good reading but I feel as though I could have read another book and learned more about life after communism.
worthwhile read June 24, 2005
A Reader (Philadelphia, PA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a good book, and one worth reading. It's not a history book nor a work of political philosophy. The analysis isn't rigrously done. I don't say these things as criticisms, but rather to point out what sort of book it is. It's a book of essays that provide a particular picture of what life was like in the early 90's in post-communist Eastern and Central Europe. Many times these pictures are insightful and can help throw light on a situaiton. They can help provide that "ah-ha!" moment that is sometimes lacking from a more historical or analytic account. So, it fills a good roll that way, but you should not expect it to be something it's not. My only other criticism is that sometimes it got a bit too close to the "why are we eastern europeans so dumb?" mode for my taste. But, it's an enjoyable book that would be useful for anyone with an interest in post-communist eastern europe. For those who want a deeper view of how Eastern Europe got to be how it was when the Soviet Union fell, I'd recommend reading this book together with parts of Alec Nove's terrific _The Economics of Feasible Socialism_.
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