Slavenka Drakulic

Slavenka Drakulic is the book's main character; it is written almost exclusively from her perspective. Slavenka is currently a world-renowned Croatian writer and feminist. She is born in Rijeka, Croatia in 1949, under communism in Yugoslavia and earns her degrees in comparative literature and sociology from the University in Zagreb. She then goes to work for ten years at a Croatian political magazine known as Start—a bi-weekly newspaper where she writes news stories and editorials. She always writes for a weekly newspaper, Danas. In both papers, she focuses on feminist issues.

In How We Survived Communism, Slavenka discusses the cultural and economic effects of communism on the women of Eastern Europe. The book consists of her character sketches of different Eastern European women, their struggles and their circumstances. We see Slavenka as a child with her mother, as a mother herself with her own daughter, as...