As in previous years the Croatian Heritage Foundation took part in the Book Night event with the promotion of a new tome by Tomislav Žigmanov and an exhibition of magazines produced in the Croatian minority enclaves in central and southeastern Europe.
As in previous years the Croatian Heritage Foundation took part in the Book Night event with a fascinating promotion of a new tome by Subotica’s Tomislav Žigmanov, Vivisekcije književnosti vojvođanske i ine teme hrvatske (A Vivisection of the Literature of Vojvodina and Other Croatian Themes), and an exhibition of magazines produced in the Croatian minority enclaves in central and southeastern Europe.
Joining Žigmanov at the promotion on the 23rd of April were deputy CHF director Ivan Tepeš and the book’s reviewers: professor Vinko Brešić of the Croatian language and culture department of the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Mirko Ćurić, president of the Croatian Writers’ Association chapter for Slavonia/Baranja/Srijem. The book is published by the Istria County chapter of the Croatian Writers’ Association in Pula and the Croatian Academic Society of Subotica.
The presentation was brilliantly led by Vesna Kukavica, the head of our publishing department, who welcomed everyone and greeted Member of Parliament Vesna Bedeković, chair of the committee on education, science and culture; Blaženka Divjak, the representative of the minister of education and science; Ivana Franić, assistant minister of education and science; Dario Magdić of the State Office for Croats Abroad; Dragutin Palašek, representing the mayor of Zagreb, CHF board of directors president Milan Kovač and board of directors member and writer Hrvoje Hitrec.
In his fifteenth book award winning writer, poet, essayist and politician Žigmanov offers just shy of two hundred pages covering contemporary Vojvodina writers, including Ante Vukov, Matija Molcer, Milovan Milković, Mirko Kopunović, Marko Kljajić, Vojislav Sekelj, Stipan Bašić Škaraba, Lazar Francišković, Petko Vojnić Purčar, Zvonko Sarić, Lazar Novaković, Draško Ređep, and Dragan Muharem. Also dear to his heart are the outcomes of the literary creativity and lives of Ivan Kujundžić, Ante Jakšić and Balint Vujkov, enriched with data from literary history and aimed at saving their names from oblivion. In Croatia’s neighbourhood, which includes Serbia, there has been and continues to be a fascinating body of Croatian literature. The issue of the critical and scholarly reception of this writing is even more pertinent in the home country and in homeland literature—there can be no positioning of their work within the body of Croatian literature without these activities. This is why this book is a worthy effort and contribution to the critical overview of these works of literature and an indicator of their role with regard to literary production in the Croatian language as a whole, noted CHF deputy director Ivan Tepeš.
Also staged in the frame of this year’s eighth annual Book Night event was an exhibition of magazines and journals published in the Croatian minority enclaves of central and southeast Europe. Prominent among these in terms of its well-conceived editorial concept and wealth of content is Hrvatski glasnik, a weekly published by Hungarian Croatians, and its Internet edition, both edited by Branka Pavić Blažetin. The Croatian community in Hungary has for the past three years celebrated the 2nd of May as Croatian Media Day in Hungary.
Also garnering significant attention with the diversity of its thematic coverage and excellent layout was Hrvatska riječ of Subotica, led by acting executive and chief editor Jasminka Dulić. This news and publishing house has been active for the past seventeen years and its key publication is the Hrvatska riječ news and politics weekly, with 835 issues published to date. As a co-publisher—working with the Institute for the Culture of Vojvodina Croatians, directed since its founding by Tomislav Žigmanov—it has jointly printed over seventy book and publishes the Nova riječ journal of art and culture.
Among the thirty or so magazines and journals published in the Croatian minority enclaves of central and southeast Europe the oldest is the weekly Hrvatske novine, edited by publicist Petar Tyran and published for the past 109 years by the Hrvatsko štamparsko društvo of Željezno (Eisenstadt) in Austria. The generation of readers now living from Gradišće to western Hungary and around Slovakia’s capital of Bratislava see them as an important medium of social communication. Also here is the Tajednik Gradišćanskih Hrvatov—published under the motto Sloga je moć (“Unity is Power”) it may be considered a first-rate cultural property of the Gradišće Croat community and of Croatians on the whole.
By: Diana Šimurina-Šoufek; Photography: Snježana Radoš