Croatia: Travels in Undiscovered Country

I recently returned from three weeks in Croatia and came across this book. I would say Tony's writing is fair to good, and I enjoyed his insights into how the country felt and looked in 1996 post war. Because most of my time was spent along the Dalmatian Coastline his stories have inspired me to spend time on my upcoming return to Croatia in the rurual areas. Speaking Hrvatska is going to help and for anyone contemplating travel to Croatia he does a good job of articulating the lifestyle of 10 years ago. It is changing drmatically now that it is poised to join the EU. His stories are off the beaten tourist path and defininitely reflect the flavor of a very diverse country that remains in denial about its history and its future.

This is an account of its author's travels in what for him was "undiscovered country" but for the reader, save for this book, would be forever undiscoverable. Mr. Fabiancic, a Canadian born in Croatia, fluent in the language and connected with the culture, combines a native's access with a foreigner's perspective; he thus engages deeply on our behalf with places and people that otherwise, if we encountered them at all, would be no more than two-dimensional snapshots, real or remembered. Indeed, much of what Mr. Fabiancic saw and experienced just ten or so years ago may well already have been swept away by the riptide of progress that has swept over the newly independent nation since the disintegration of the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991. His observations are keen and his descriptions immediate. Mr. Fabiancic also shares his inner travels with his audience. That aspect of the book is not especially to the taste of this reader, for whom Mr. Fabiancic's reports of personal epiphanies and developmental milestones ("My youth is over") get in the way of his descriptions of the often striking landscape and its often colorful and, it seems, always engaging inhabitants. At times, too, his striving for literary effect can be a bit labored: in places the similes are so thickly spread as to obscure the nouns they are meant to illuminate, and more than one perfectly effective account is blunted by a last-minute effort to give it Meaning. Should such distractions tempt you to put the book down, don't. If you find a chapter heavy going, try another; they vary in style, as in subject matter, and little is lost by reading them out of order. Later, returning to a passage that had seemed a little overblown, you may experience it more sympathetically. Especially if you have in mind to visit Croatia, the author's vivid insight into what the country and its people are and have been will make coping with the book's less successful qualities more than worth your while.

Croatia: Travels In Undiscovered Country by Tony Fabijancic is a superbly written, personal memoir and eye-witness travelogue of what it was like to experience the land and people of Croatia as both an ancestral home and an undiscovered country. Transporting the reader on one man's journey into a rich and varied landscape, Croatia: Travels In Undiscovered Country is a vividly written, deftly informative, and memorably presented experience of a land steeped in centuries of tradition and lore. Croatia: Travels In Undiscovered Country is especially recommended reading for armchair travelogue adventure enthusiasts and anyone thinking of a trip to Croatia for themselves.

A terrific book. I have found no other book on Croatia that offers such insight into the country's current way of life and historical emblems, without becoming trite or resorting solely to political fact listing. Reveals the fragile beauty of a an undiscovered country in the midst of economic and cultural change. A wonderful travel book. Accessible and imaginative writing. Very well done.