10 H.P. - Kronika našeg vremena

The work is a kind of autobiographical confession of an intellectual torn between art, ideology and the reality of wars, revolutions and political turmoil. The author witnesses turbulent times: the First World War, the October Revolution, the rise of Nazism and the Second World War, while sharply denouncing totalitarianism, anti-Semitism and the violation of human rights.

Ehrenburg does not offer a black and white picture, but through an introspective style criticizes both the East and the West, depicting moral dilemmas and the price of truth in a time of political repression. His attitude towards Stalin's regime, which he initially supported, but later became disillusioned with its methods, is particularly noteworthy.

The first Croatian translation of 10 L.S. Khronika nashego vremeni (10 Л.С. Хроника нашего времени) by a Jewish Soviet writer and Bolshevik revolutionary, Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (1891-1967) was published in Zagreb in the early 1930s with a stunning dust jacket with a photomontage by an annonymous artist. The novel was written in Russian language in 1929 and first published in 1931. Binoza publishing house in Zagreb, was issuing in the early 1930s similar revolutionary modern original texts and translations, accompanied by striking modernist dustjackets, as Minerva in Zagreb, Croatia, and Nolit in Belgrade, Serbia. Unlike these two publishing houses, who were using the same artists for series of publications, Binoza was hiering designers and artists for individual publications and some of the covers, like this one, are not signed. The book is today very rare. The only example we could find outside Croatia is at the Bavarian State Library.