Croatia feminist writer Slavenka Drakulic dies at 76

Croatian prominent feminist writer and journalist Slavenka Drakulic, one of the country's most widely translated authors, has died aged 76, her close friend confirmed to AFP on Sunday.

Drakulic, who died on Saturday in Croatia, was among the first authors to bring feminist issues into public debate in former communist Yugoslavia.

Born in the northern port city of Rijeka in 1949, she began her writing career in the late 1970s after studying comparative literature and sociology at the University of Zagreb.

She published her first essay collection "The Deadly Sins of Feminism" in 1984, followed three years later by her debut novel "Holograms of Fear".

Drakulic wrote numerous novels and essay collections, translated into more than 20 languages, in many of which she focused on women's fate, including works inspired by

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and Mileva Einstein, the first wife of Albert Einstein.

A free-thinking intellectual, Drakulic wrote about the collapse of communism, the rise of nationalism, the wars that accompanied the collapse of Yugoslavia, but also ageing, illness and fear of death.

Her most internationally recognised books include essay collections "How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed", "Balkan Express" and the novel "As if I Am Not There" which deals with wartime sexual violence in Bosnia.

In essay collection "They Would Never Hurt A Fly", she offered portraits of Yugoslav war criminals, exploring the banality of evil and the role of ordinary people as perpetrators.

Her essays also appeared in international media including The New York Times Magazine, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, La Repubblica and The Guardian.

In 2025, she received the Croatian Journalists' Association (HND) lifetime achievement award.

In an interview at the time, when asked about writing, she said: "When we talk about journalism: testimony, resistance, analysis, and the search for truth. When we talk about literary creation ... it is a necessity for me. Whether it is journalism or prose, what matters to me is to write."

Drakulic lived in both Croatia and Sweden.

Agence France-Presse