The place of many faces : the images of a university in contemporary literature

Bibliogr. s. 100-101

The article shows the university as an institution, as well as a place where one gains experience, in the optics of contemporary autobiographical novels: Lost in translation by Eva Hoffman, "My zdies’ emigranty" by Manuela Gretkowska, and a novel "The Ministry of Pain" by Dubravka Ugresić, in which there are some signs of autobiographical inspirations. Even though the university is not a very important place for the action of the mentioned books, it is significant for the characters. For Hoffman, American universities (firstly Rice, then Cambridge) were the places, where she felt comfortable, not as a stranger (as she did most of her life in Canada). For Gretkowska the university had only an official, institutional image: it constricted her scientific interests by the major she chose, so she needed to find some consensus in her life. The most complicated situation was the one of Tanja Lucić - the main character of "The Ministry of Pain". For her, official relations mixed up with the private ones, and personal problems connected with the civil war trauma, complicated her life and made the university a place of recovery after a difficult experience of losing the fatherland. The article sums up these very different points of view as an interesting collage of the university experiences.