With Grof Darkula on a book that dissects women’s reality and speaks about what is usually left unsaid

In a world that fuels hatred toward anything different, amuses itself with trivialities and looks away from everything that matters, spreading disinformation out of malice or ideological blindness, it can be difficult to feel anything other than despair. Calls for reintroducing military service or for a meteor to strike appear because a man does not meet the stylistic standards of the broader community. Social media is flooded with hateful comments about a single bench painted in rainbow colors. Legions of men have been pleading for three years because of the supposed lack of female obedience and modesty, invoking a return to “traditional values”.

At the same time, what should compel us to raise our voices often remains cocooned within the rare attempts of those unwilling to remain silent. Corruption spreads like mold through every pore of the system, the cost of living keeps rising, more and more people live at risk of poverty, society’s mental health is neglected, and pensions are so small that after an entire working life all you receive is the loss of dignity. Alongside this growing hardship, violence is also rising, femicides pile up across the region, women’s lives are extinguished and turned into statistics and society responds with silence, far less provoked than by trivialities that spark days of heated debate.

14 short stories about women’s everyday lives

One of the figures who consistently reminds society of what matters when it becomes engrossed in trivialities, raising its voice on every issue of social importance, is the independent activist media platform Grof Darkula, followed by more than 77,000 people. In addition to addressing feminism, reproductive and queer rights, social inequalities and mental health on social media every day, Grof Darkula extends its influence into publishing. After the great success of its first book Priručnik za preživljavanje (Survival Guide), which has now reached its fourth edition, the anonymous author duo has published a new book titled Anatomija poslušne žene (Anatomy of an Obedient Woman). It is an emotional and authentic collection that gives voice, through fourteen powerful short stories, to women who usually remain invisible in public life. The book reveals the reality behind closed doors of Croatian homes, hospitals, delivery rooms, office corridors and living rooms, unveiling the struggles, anxieties and silence of women whom society deems “strong” and placing at the forefront all those who have said they have had enough and chosen to live differently.

This is a book that arrives at exactly the right moment.

“The desire to write a new book appeared very soon after the expanded edition of the Survival Guide was published. We did not immediately have a clear idea of what or how we wanted to write, but we were drawn to the entire creative process and to the need to continue writing about themes that are insufficiently represented here. When we started working on Anatomy, we did not intend for women to be at the center of every story, and the title itself did not exist until the very end. But as the writing progressed, it became clear that all the themes, motifs and characters naturally circled back to women. Through the process we discarded some initial ideas and realized that women needed space, because society often overlooks their lives, experiences and daily realities”, the duo explains, adding that the year now drawing to a close was so challenging and difficult that they considered giving up several times. “We continued because we deeply believed that this book carries an important message and gathers the voices of women who are heard far too little. That is why it felt crucial to keep going”.

Education, awareness and open conversation

The book was created throughout 2025 and the result is work that portrays women’s reality and daily life in a raw, gentle, emotional and unvarnished way, while infusing humor and irony. Still, I want to know how Anatomy differs from the Survival Guide. After the Guide’s success, it seems brave to leave behind a “proven formula” and embark on something new in terms of genre and therefore uncertain. “They are entirely different types of books. Anatomy is fiction and a collection of short stories, while the Survival Guide was a combination of personal experiences and essayistic reflections on society. The stories were true, personal and ours, and through them we analyzed the state of a patriarchally structured society. Thematically they certainly intersect, both address the position of women in society and the consequences of life in a system that frequently tries to reduce them to obedience, but the approaches and tones are completely different”, the authors explain.

Although this is fiction, some of the stories were inspired by the authors’ lives or the lives of people close to them. “Writing the story about baby blues was especially emotional because it required speaking with a family member who went through a difficult childbirth. Some parts were hard to hear and even harder to put on paper. The same goes for the story about a young woman caring for her father who had been a parent to her parents since childhood. Such stories carry a strong autobiographical thread and are therefore emotionally demanding, but for that very reason they mattered to us, because we believe many women across the Balkans will recognize themselves in them”, the duo says. This recognition is the key to their dedicated activist work. They are aware that profound social change does not come without education, awareness and open dialogue about issues that have been neglected and swept under the rug for years. “We need to create spaces where women feel safe to speak their minds, to talk about their bodies, sexuality, motherhood, work and boundaries without fear of judgment. We need more media literacy, more feminist education, more solidarity and mutual empowerment. Systems that expect obedience can survive only as long as we remain silent about them, and every step out of silence is already an act of resistance and a small revolution.”

Radical honesty

Many of the stories explore experiences that are both deeply intimate and universal: isolation, unpaid labor, baby blues, breakups, trauma and the internalized female obedience that is so deeply ingrained that part of society does not even question it, accepting it as the “natural” order of things. For this reason, the themes in Anatomy of an Obedient Woman are approached with “radical honesty”. “Our protagonists are not idealized or romantically portrayed, they are not heroines who save the world. We have a mother who hates her own child and a woman who has decided to completely decentralize men from her life because she has become aware of the system she lives in and surgically removes everything connected to them. Through our characters we show what internalized misogyny looks like in practice, how women often settle for less because that is what they were taught and how many patterns go unquestioned. In other stories we also depict the opposite, the refusal to be part of such a system, and this contrast opens a space for readers to reflect”, the authors conclude. Although these stories originate from the authors’ minds, the versions that appear in Anatomy are part of someone’s reality. And change, as always, begins only when we stop being afraid to speak it aloud.