David Williams is the translator of Dubravka UgreSi?'s Karaoke Culture (2011) and Miljenko Jergovi?'s Mama Leone (2012). He holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, has taught at the Universities of East Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Belgrade and Novi Sad, Serbia; and Auckland, New Zealand, and held postdoctoral fellowships at the Universities of Leipzig and Konstanz, Germany.

Introduction: Exercises in Polysemy 1. 'The Citizen of a Ruin' 2. Unconditional Surrender and the Ruins of Berlin 3. Aporias, Impasses, and Ostalgia 4. Trümmerliteratur Redux Epilogue: 'The Future Has No Future'

Moving through the elegiac ruins of the Berlin Wall and the Yugoslav disintegration, Writing Postcommunism explores literary evocations of the pervasive disappointment and mourning that have marked the postcommunist twilight.