Ugresic's works to date fall into two distinct parts separated by the outbreak of the Yugoslav wars in 1991. Her first fiction for adults may be seen as playing with ideas about the relationship of fiction to reality. The works written since 1991 are concerned with the reality of Croatia in wartime, including the projection of reality as fiction. In each case the single most striking characteristic of Ugresic's work is her ironic distance, her refusal to be taken in either by the self-importance of the literary profession or by compelling appeals to patriotic emotion.
Like so many postmodern fiction writers, Ugresic in her early works mixes elements from a range of literary genres, from the traditional canon of "high" literature to the "trivial" forms of romance, thriller, and fantasy. Features of all these collide with one another, undermining the coherence of the reader's anticipated response. The first of these works, Poza za Prozu (A Pose for Prose, 1978), represents a kind of hypothetical sketchbook for Ugresic's future writing; here she tries out and rejects various possible styles and approaches colored by the ironic deflation of the title.
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