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Around the World in Books / Yugoslavia-1 (Serbia)
The Bizarre ‘Miss Ex-Yugoslavia’ Beauty Pageant
What happened when an entrepreneur in Australia recruited contestants from a ‘zombie country’ that no longer exits
This is the latest entry in the “Around the World in Books” series that has been reviewing 30 books from 30 countries during March. Miss Ex-Yugoslavia is a memoir by a journalist from Serbia, one of the six republics that made up the socialist federation of the former Yugoslavia. A second post on March 29 will review a short story collection by Aleksandar Hemon, who came to America from another, Bosnia, and co-wrote the script for The Matrix Resurrections.
Not many entrepreneurs might think it was a good idea to hold a beauty pageant for women from a country that no longer existed. Even fewer might think so if the contestants came from places where, in the recent past, blood had flowed in streets.
A Serbian entrepreneur thought outside the tiara — in this case, a plastic crown. He had the idea for a “Miss Ex-Yugoslavia” pageant for 16-to-23-year-old émigrés to his adopted Australia, a contest open to women from any of the six countries that once made up the old Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Croatia…
