Does anyone know what novel this is? I read about this scene in some article once.
About Yugoslavia: I have had a number of conversations with Croats of my generation (I'm 32) and slightly older. The older Croats and the girls in my generation tended to see the breakup of Yugoslavia and Tudjman's flavour of Croatian nationalism and insane. The boys in my generation (late teens at the time of the start of the Yugoslav wars) were all nationalists.
In relation to this I also had a discussion with a number of people from former Austria-Hungary and all of them agreed that Spain is a "big country" and so I couldn't relate to their "small country" concerns about national independence. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes