Slobodan Šnajder

Slobodan Šnajder (pronounced [slɔ̝bɔ̝̌dan ʃnǎjdɛ̝r]; born July 8, 1948) is a Croatian writer and publicist.

Šnajder was born in 1948 in Zagreb, where he graduated in philosophy and English studies from the Faculty of Philosophy. He was co-founder and editor of the theatre journal Prolog as well as the editor of the editions published by Cekade. His short stories, essays and plays were published since 1966. From January to June 1993, he was a columnist in daily newspaper Glas Slavonije, Osijek, (Reader for the Melancholics), and, since January 1994 till 2013, in a daily newspaper Novi list, Rijeka, (Dangerous Connections). He is a member of the Advisory Board of the left-wing magazine Novi Plamen. His columns and his plays have supporters and opposers. Although Šnajder has been writing prose since ever, his first full-length novel Morendo was issued in 2012.

The very first professional production of Šnajder was his early play Minigolf – Drama Theatre Gavella, Zagreb, directed by Dino Radojević.

The Croatian National Theatre of Zagreb (HNK) has staged three of his plays, Kamov, smrtopis (Kamov, the Necrography) (1978), Držićev san (Dream of Držić) (1980), both produced by Ljubiša Ristić, and “Nevjesta od vjetra” (Bride of the Wind), staged by Ivica Boban. Kamov, smrtopis was staged in March 2003 by the Zagreb Youths' Theatre (ZKM) in the production of Branko Brezovec.

Dumanske tišine (Silences of a nun) is a play that was staged all over what was Yugoslavia. Another play of him, “Zmijin svlak” (The Snakeskin), about mass-rapings in Bosnian war, was played all over Europe, from Tübingen, Oslo, Warsaw, Kraków, Veroli near Rome (Festival Dionysia), Frankfurt/Main, Dublin, Wien, Kopenhagen, till Belgrade. This happens to be his mostly played text abroad, but not in Croatia.

But there is another play that seems to be much more controversial right from the date it was issued till today: Hrvatski Faust (Croatian Faust). There are certain similarities between debates in the context of Ralph Hochhut’s play “Stellvertreter” and this play of Šnajder. The opening night was in Split, 1982, directed by Dino Radojević. Very soon the play was staged in Varaždin (Petar Veček) and Belgrade (Slobodan Unkovski). But all the ideas to make it in Zagreb, where the events described in the play took place in 1942, under regime of ustaša (Croatian “quislings”), were made impossible from the very first moment. Actually, the play takes into consideration the history of the very theatre itself that in the seventies played two Šnajder's plays.

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