Dora and the Minotaur: My Life with Picasso

The story of Dora Maar, the renowned French Surrealist photographer and painter, and her turbulent relationship with Pablo Picasso. The life of Henrietta Teodora Markovitch, half Croatian, half French, is divided into two periods: before and after Picasso. The daughter of a Zagreb architect and Cognac boutique owner, after 16 years in Buenos Aires, she returned to her native Paris to study photography and painting. It was here that in 1930 she changed her real name to the pseudonym Dora Maar, which has since become her trademark. Even before her association with Picasso, she was a renowned photographer and one of the most prominent figures of the Parisian avant-garde. In the novel, Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulić reconstructs the artist's life, joys, and suffering based on notes from her discovered notebook. It tells the story of a woman who falls in love with Picasso, sharing her life and ideals with him, but loses everything to the domineering artist, not only her art and the chance for growth, but also her personality. She gave up photography, which was practically her life. The novel "Dora and the Minotaur: My Life with Picasso" is consistent with Slavenka Drakulić's enduring interest in women's issues in the contemporary world, primarily the female body, female illnesses, and traumas. Dora Maar's interpretation of Dora Maar's life is compelling literary precisely because she skillfully extracts broader, universal meanings from seemingly ordinary, banal scars hidden in the dark depths of humanity. Strahimir Primorac, Forum Slavenka Drakulić is a Croatian writer, journalist, and essayist. She is the author of journalistic books and novels. Three of her books have been published in Polish: "They Wouldn't Hurt Even a Fly," "The Body of Her Body," and "The Invisible Woman." She collaborates with the American magazine "The Nation" and the Croatian daily "Jutarnji list." She has published in The New York Times, The Guardian, La Stampa, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and Politiken, among others. She writes in Croatian and English, and her books have been translated into over fifteen languages. In 2004, she received the European Understanding Award at the Leipzig Book Fair and in 2018, the Best Project Book for Adaptation award for her book "The Invisible Woman and Other Stories." Dora and the Minotaur has been published in Italy, Germany, France, Denmark, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia, and Lithuania.