Paper short abstract:

Red ocean –first croatian science fiction and utopian novel written by a female author Marija Jurić Zagorka and reading of utopia as a satire of society

Paper long abstract:

Marija Jurić Zagorka (1873-1957) was the first croatian female journalist, author of many popular history and romance novels. Although her work was well received among female readers, the critics often put Zagorka in frames of trivial literature of less or no value. However in the last decades there is again a huge interest not only for her published books but also for her cultural, social, humanitarian and other activites. It is less or completely unknown that she is also an author of the first croatian science fiction and utopian novel, neglected for years. The novel is titled Red ocean (with clear asocciation to Russian revolution and reveals Zagorka's stand on social order) and it was published only as a part of the newspaper "Jutarnji list" from 1918 until 1919, hundred years after publication of one of the earliest examples of science fiction novel in the world "Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus" by Mary Shelley.

The novel "Red ocean" was never turned into a book and this research aims to help the revalorization of her body of work and her bold ideas about possible development of society through discourse analysis. Often utopias serve as a society satire and Zagorka, in order to avoid sanction or condemnation, decided to use this framework to expose her ideas on nationality, feminism, politics and other social and culture phenomenons.