The OF Blog: I see the English translation of Goran Petrović's An Atlas Traced by the Sky is now available

Saturday, December 15, 2012

I see the English translation of Goran Petrović's An Atlas Traced by the Sky is now available

I placed an order a couple of weeks ago when I saw it on Amazon, but it was oddly labeled as being in Serbian, yet with an English-language cover, so I ordered it more thinking that I'd have the original text to go with the Spanish translation (which I enjoyed quite a bit) than I would be having the English translation.  Well, it turns out that it is indeed a Belgrade-published English translation (no idea if there'll be UK/US publication in the near future) and this is the blurb.  Tell me if this sounds interesting to you:

Have you ever wanted to own an atlas that would map out the relations between dreams and waking, between reality and imagination, between the past and the future?  Award winning writer Goran Petrović offers you precisely that in his authentic postmodernist style.  In their search for life's meaning and happiness, the cast of characters, living in a house with the sky as its roof, spend their days connecting the threads of this life with the myriad threads of other worlds.  They offer us maps which show the paths through birth and death, love and romance, the thoroughfare between joy and despair.  By combining their tale with a collection of ancient and future documents dealing with amulets, map-making, legends and mythology, the author guides the reader through a fantastic labyrinth toward the rather astounding outcome of self-awareness.  This is an atlas that will make you dream and, even more, it will show you where your dreams may ultimately lead.  Some of the best qualities of Serbian postmodernist prose in Pavić's manner can be found in this novel.

An Atlas Traced by the Sky is, paradoxically, a book which stylistically reminds us of many other books and authors (The Arabian Nights, The Decameron, Borges, Pavić, Ende), but which actually, in its rarity, in its baroque elegance and in the feast of imagination it contains, truly does not resemble a single one of those books or authors. – Mihajlo Pantić

 I will review this translation before year's end.  Unless the quality of the English translation is much poorer than that of the Spanish, I suspect it'll have a place in my year-end summary of 2012 releases.

3 comments:

Hélène said...

This seems quite interesting! Unfortunately, it isn't translated in French and I'll have to order it from Serbia. Well, I'm a great proponent of the European Community, so...
I just noticed another of his books has been translated -"69 tiroirs"- : a convoluted story of readers meeting somewhere between reality and reading. This kind of thing greatly appeals to me!

Larry Nolen said...

There's a third that I read in French translation earlier this year, the excellent Le Siège de L'église Saint-Sauveur. That one is a bit more historical in focus, yet with enough magical/surreal moments to qualify it as a speculative fiction of some sort.

Hélène said...

Yes, I read it after your first review - and many thanks to you!

 
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