One of my reviews has been translated and printed in a newspaper's literary supplement section.

Last week, I wrote a review of Serbian writer Zoran Živković's 1998 novella, The Writer.  Živković liked it so much that he asked if I wouldn't mind if it were translated and submitted to the literary supplement section of the Belgrade newspaper Politika.  I said sure, that would be great.  Late last night, Živković sent me this:

Although I have had other essays of mine translated into Portuguese, this is the first time that I have ever had one republished in a newspaper, much less a leading daily.  Just thought I'd share this very cool news with everyone.  And yes, I can understand bits and pieces of the translation. 

Zoran Živković, Pisac/The Writer

Uključio sam kompjuter.

Prethodno sam, naravno, spustio roletnu.  Bio je to deo jutarnjeg rituala, koji je imao praktičnog smisla za vedrih dana, kakav je bio ovaj, ali ne i onda kada bi bilo oblačno.  Svejedno, ja sam je i tada spuštao, sujeverno težeći jedinstvu ambijenta.  Moja radna soba gleda na istok, a ja sedim za stolom naspram velikog prozora, tako da bi me, bez roletne, sunce zaslepljivalo sve tamo negde do podneva, nagoneći me da čkiljim u ekran.  Ovako nisam čkiljio, ali sam zato, zarad ambijenta, naprezao oči  u nepotrebnoj polutami za oblačnih dana.

Roletna, doduše, nije bila sasvim spuštena.  Zaustavio bih je na petnaestak centimetara od donje ivice okvira, kako bi sunce ipak moglo da dopre tamo gde je svakako bilo dobrodošlo:  do osmostranog staklenog suda, smeštenog u prozoru, joji je nekada bio mali akvarijum, a sada je služio kao saksija za skupinu minijaturnih kaktusa, sa belim i ružičastim cvetićima.  Svetlost je, pored toga, dopirala i kroz tanke proreze ismeđu plastičnih rebara zategnute roletne, gradeći u polumraku sobe titrave arabeske.  Čak i da sam sedeo leđima okrenut prozoru, mislim da bih samo radi ove nestalne igre svetlihi tamnih pruga po površinama stvari držao roletnu stalno spuštenu.  Čudnovatom utisku nestvarnosti, koji je tu nastajao i koji je, ko zna zbog čega, veoma podsticajno delovao na mene, doprinosilo je i lelujanje zrnaca prašine u kosim zracima.  Znam da ima pisaca kojima je sasvim svejedno u kakvom okružju stvaraju, ali ja zasigurno ne spadam među takve.  Za mene je ambijent bezmalo sve. (pp. 5-6)

I switched on the computer.

First I pulled down the Venetian blind, of course.  That was part of my morning ritual, and on sunny days like this one it had a practical function.  Nevertheless, I also pull it down on cloudy days, superstitiously striving to maintain the ambiance.  My study looks to the east, and my desk faces a large window, so that, without the blind, I would have to squint and scowl until noon to see anything on the screen.  This way there's no need to squint, but on cloudy days, for the sake of maintaining the ambiance, I strain my eyes in unnecessary semidarkness.

Not that I pull it all the way down.  I leave a gap of about fifteen centimeters above the windowsill, so that sunshine reaches the area where it is definitely welcome:  an eight-sided glass vessel, set in the window.  That vessel, formerly a small aquarium, has been converted to serve as a flowerpot for a group of miniature cactuses, the kind with very small pink and white flowers.  Light also slants through the narrow slits between the horizontal plastic bars, creating shimmering arabesques in the dusky air of the room.  Even if I sat with my back to the window, I think I would keep the blind down at such times of the day just to enjoy the transient play of bright and dark stripes on objects in the room.  The peculiar impression of unreality thus created, one which (for reasons unknown to me) I find very stimulating, is enhanced by dust motes floating in the air, caught by diagonal beams of light.  I know that some writers are not at all influenced by their immediate surroundings.  For me, the ambient mood is almost everything. (pp. 3-4, translated by Alice Copple-Tošić)

The beginning to Zoran Živković's 1998 novella, Pisac (The Writer), is in many ways typical of his writing.  There rarely are flashy, attention-grabbing moments in these introductory paragraphs.  Rather, almost the inverse is true, as he frequently begins with the most mundane of events (here, the simple powering up of a computer) before some peculiar trait of the narrator sends the narrative careening off into something remarkable.  Ambiance, as the anonymous narrator notes, is almost everything when it comes to Živković's stories and this is especially true for The Writer, the first of a triptych of stories that involves the writer-text-reader semantic triangle.

Plot may not seem to be a primary emphasis, yet The Writer depends heavily upon the intricate placing of narrative developments.  As the writer tries to compose a tale, his dependency upon shades of light and darkness takes on several forms throughout the novella.  His musings about his difficulties (a theme that Živković would revisit in several other stories, each time with a different permutation) are stacked upon each other, creating a catalog of issues that somehow, in their seemingly digressive fashion, manages to suck the reader into considering them at hand.  This meticulous assembly of the conundrums the writer faces may not appear at first to be akin to a crime novelist's revelations of clues, yet there is a certain familial relationship in how each is presented to the reader.  Živković's carefulness in parsing out of information related to the writer and his attempts to write pays dividends by story's end.

Characterization is also surprisingly well-done, considering the paucity of characters (two) and the amount of time devoted to exploring the narrator/writer's internal thoughts and actions.  With precise wording (the English translation does a good job of capturing the essence of the Serbian original, although at several points the sentence structure had to be broken in order to preserve more of the narrative's "ambiance"), Živković creates quirky, obsessive characters whose occasional single-mindedness leads to some amusing scenes, such as the pseudo-Freudian interrogation of the writer's childhood by the writer's so-called friend (himself a writer of sorts, albeit a possibly deluded one).  These oddball moments add a levity to the narrative that makes it as much a story about humanity as it is about the addictive art of literary composition.

As hinted at above, Živković's prose, in both the original and in translation, is nearly pitch-perfect.  He is a writer who creates "atmospheric" settings that feel simultaneously plausible and utterly strange.  He never rushes the development of setting, events, or characters, yet his narratives (and this is especially true here, as The Writer is around 30 pages in the omnibus The Writer/The Book/The Reader translation published by PS Publishing) are very compact, with almost no wasted space or energy.  Yet there is a sense of grandness behind this intimate story that belies its brevity.  The result is a story that is simple in its presentation and yet very nuanced in its details.

The Writer, as one of Živković's earlier works, can almost be seen as an ur-text of sorts for his later writings.  The structure of the narrative, beginning and ending with simple, mundane actions, along with the character type of the narrator, is seen, at least in glimpses, multiple times in his latter works.  Yet here (as well as in most of his other tales), these familiar elements do not equate to staid stories, as there is always some unique element (perhaps a different mental train of thoughts from a common point, or a more or less fantastical component) that makes each story different from each other.  Certainly The Writer is a well-written story in its own right; it is merely a bonus to see certain connections between it and Živković's latter works that enrich both.

Zoran Živković, The Five Wonders of the Danube

Када му је најзад пажњу заокупила слика, поново је споредно однело превагу хад главним.  Прво је помислио на оно што га чека на рапорту код старешине Обласне управе за мостове.  Свакако ће бити оптужен да је спавао у чуварској кућици, а такав преступ није могао да прође без строге казне.  Можда ће чак остати без посла.  Неће му ништа вредети што ће се заклињати да није ока сллопио целе ноћи.  У прилог му неће ићи ни то што ниједном није заспао за тридесет седам година службе.  Као да је већ чуо громовни глас старешине:  ”Како је, онда, поред вас будног, неко подигао толику слику наврх моста?”

Није имао одговор на то питање.  Збиља, како?  Па још нечујно и неприметно?  Бар он ништа није ни чуо ни видео.  Мост је био осветљен, а ноћ готово без саобраћаја.  У сваком случају, нико се није зауставио.  Уз то, ово свакако није могао да иѕведе само један човек, нити би биле довољне једне дугачке мердевине, а био би неопходан и алат да се слика причврсти.  Горе нема кука, па да се сама закачи. (p. 4)

When the painting finally caught his attention, once again a further consideration prevailed.  His first thought was of what awaited him when he reported to his supervisor at the District Bridge Administration.  He would certainly be accused of sleeping in the guardhouse and such an offence would have to be severely punished.  He might even lose his job.  It would do no good to swear that he hadn't had a wink of sleep all night long.  The fact that he had not fallen asleep in the thirty-seven years he'd been on the job would also be of no help.  He could almost hear his supervisor's thundering voice:  "If you were awake, how could someone have hung such a big painting on top of the bridge?"

He had no answer to that question.  How, indeed?  And without being heard or seen?  At least, he hadn't heard or seen anything.  The bridge was illuminated and there'd been almost no traffic that night.  In any case, no one had stopped.  And this couldn't have been the work of just one person.  One tall ladder wouldn't have been enough, plus tools would be needed to attach the painting.  There were no hooks up above from which to hang it. (p. 4)

Zoran Živković's 2011 novel, The Five Wonders of the Danube, is perhaps best described as a true mosaic, as it is comprised of five sections, each correlating with famous bridges (Regensburg, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and Novi Sad) over the Danube River.  With the exception of the final section (the Blue Bridge of Novi Sad), each of the first four sections (the Black, Yellow, Red, and White Bridges) can be read independently of one another, yet when joined together with the final section, each part forms a whole much greater than its constituent elements.  Each section possesses its own sets of mysteries and wonders, with both representing one of the arts.  In them, we see people baffled by mysterious events, some of which are among some of Živković's most weird creations yet, with each event being associated with an art such as painting, sculpting, literature, or music.

The wonders begin with Regensburg's Black Bridge.  An elderly bridge night watchman encounters a large painting of a bridge that somehow has become attached to the bridge.  From whence did this painting come and to what could it refer?  A growing number of inspectors, from the watchman's supervisor to members of the state secret police, try to delve into its mysteries (and into those of the people who have stumbled upon the painting).  As in much of his previous work, Živković's characters are not quite the non-comprehending people that they appear to be, but instead possess their own little pieces to the puzzle.  As the series of investigators grows, like a set of Matryoshka dolls in reverse, the significance of this bridge painting (attached to a bridge, no less!) grows as well, until it seems that there may be a nefariousness about it.  Then there are some pesky river gulls intruding upon the scene and their own purposes add to the suspense.

Then suddenly, things shift away from Regensburg and go downstream a bit to Vienna's Yellow Bridge, where there are dreamers and sculptors and even a talking, literate squirrel.  Here time itself seems to be in a state of flux and creatures are not what they appear.  The descriptions feel more detached from "reality," yet paradoxically there's more "realness" to the irreal scenes occurring than if the story had been more mundane.  Yet night, like dreams, disperses in the light of day and the strange events of one Viennese night seem to fade like morning mist.

The third section, Bratislava's Red Bridge, was perhaps my favorite of the five.  Here appear two homeless men living under the bridge and trying to keep warm.  One, Isaac, is a talented carver and his likenesses of people and things that he carves into flotsam and jetsam is marveled at by his new companion, a mysterious man who carries around six printed volumes of Dostoevsky's fiction and who receives the moniker of "Fyodor" as a result.  This section, one of the shortest in the book, covers Fyodor's books and his mysterious green folder, which contains a manuscript from which he would read from time to time.  Yet no matter how literate the homeless may be, night's chills can bring about the need to abandon the material of literature for the ephemeral comforts of fire.  It is in this clash between necessity and art that a marvel occurs, one that baffles later visitors.

If the previous sections consist of arts created by the hands of their creators, then Budapest's White Bridge is devoted to the dulcet sounds of music.  An old composer returns to the scene of his greatest inspirations and greatest tragedies, hoping for one final symphony before he retires.  The flashbacks between past and present, interlaced with music and tragic events, creates a poignancy here that was largely absent from the previous sections.  The conclusion is perhaps the saddest and most moving of the book and its end sets up thematically the events of the final section.

By the time the story reaches Novi Sad's Blue Bridge, four mysteries have been established, none of which yet possess any real sort of satisfactory conclusion.  In contrast, this section opens with a very real event, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia's bridges in 1999.  However, Živković (who incidentally survived a very close call when the infamous bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade occurred) quickly departs from this event in that one of Novi Sad's four Danube bridges manages to uproot itself and take it and a bird-dog on a magical flight away from the attacking "birds" and up the Danube, visiting each of the previous four sites in succession.  Here the connections between the sections are made explicit and several of the mysteries are solved.  By itself, the Blue Bridge section is not as fascinating as the others, but when read after them, it builds upon the previous four's wonders, creating something moving and magical. 

The Five Wonders of the Danube works well because Živković has carefully developed the situations and the thematic elements specific to each section so that when the final pages of the Blue Bridge of Novi Sad are read, each element/scene flows directly into one another, widening the reader's understanding.  In a metaphoric sense, it is like a river itself, with tributaries emptying their contents into the main stream, creating something vaster and more awesome to behold.  The same holds true with this story, as the ruminations and mysteries surrounding artists, sculptors, writers, and composers flow into each other, creating a series of dialogues on the arts and the arts' influences on people.  The Five Wonders of the Danube may be one of Živković's two or three best works, as it showcases not only several of his thematic concerns but also his ability to weave seemingly disparate elements into a cohesive and memorable whole. 

Zoran Živković, Nemogući Susreti (Impossible Encounters)

Umro sam u snu.

Nije to bilo neko naročito umiranje.  Gotovo da ga nisam ni primetio.  Sanjao sam kako stupam nekim velikim hodnikom, punim vrata s obe strane na malom međusobnom rastojanju.  Kraj hodnika nije se mogao sagledati u daljini, a u njemu nije bilo nikog drugog osim mene.  Na zidu, pored svakih vrata, visio je oveći, uramljeni portret, obasjan svetiljkom postavljenom iznad njega.

Posmatrao sam likove u prolazu.  Šta sam drugo mogao da radim?  Portreti su ovde bili jedina stvar koja je narušavala nedoglednu jednoličnost hodnika.  Koliko sam uspeo da procenim, postojao je približno jednak broj slika žena i muškaraca.  Uglavnom je to bio vremešniji svet, povrmeno baš u dubokoj starosti, ali tu i tamo mogli su se videti i mlađi ljudi, pa čak i deca, premda sasvim retko.  Likovi su delovali svečano, kako to već biva na portretima – doterani, pomalo uštogljeni, svesni svoje važnosti.  Mahom su se osmehivali, ali bilo je i lica uz koja osmeh naprosto nije išao, pa je na njima stajao izraz stroge ozbiljnosti. (pp. 5-6)

I died in my sleep.

There wasn't anything special about my death.  I hardly even noticed it.  I dreamed I was walking down a long hallway closely lined with doors on both sides.  The end of the corridor was invisible in the distance, and I was alone.  On the wall next to each door hung a framed portrait, slightly larger than life, and lit from above by a lamp.

I looked at the paintings as I passed by them.  What else could I do?  Only the portraits disturbed the endless monotony of the corridor.  There seemed to be male and female portraits in approximately equal numbers, but randomly distributed.  The people were mostly of advanced age, and some were very old indeed, but here and there was a younger face, or even a child, though these were quite rare.  The images were formal studio-portraits, and the people were all elaborately, even ceremonially dressed.  They looked conscious of their own importance, and that of the occasion.  Most of them were smiling, but some faces were simply not suited to smiling.  They looked grimly serious. (p. 81, translated by Alice Copple-Tošić)

Zoran Živković's second collection,  Nemogući Susreti (Impossible Encounters in English), is structured similarly to his first, Time Gifts, in that there are six stories that share a common theme and at least one recurring feature between the stories.  Although the similarity in structure between these collections (and others that I have reviewed over the years) may seem too familiar to those who esteem variety even when it might not denote quality, the familiar qualities of these stories serve to accentuate the luminousness of Živković's stories. 

If time and the use of time's "gifts" was the overarching scene in Time Gifts, here in Impossible Encounters the "impossibility" of the encounters that the narrators experience (and the repeated mention of an eponymous book in each of the six tales) provides a narrative unity that builds upon each constituent story.  Take for instance, the first tale, "The Window."  Here we encounter the narrator after his death (which may or may not be a dream).  He finds himself in a large gallery, filled with images of humanity.  He discovers his own portraits and is struck by a mixture of surprise and bemusement at seeing his image there.  The surrealness of this situation is not the only "impossibility," as he encounters a curator of sorts who offers the narrator a second life, with a permanent death at the end.  It is in this offer that Živković explores not just our understanding of our life/death dreams, but also on conceptualizations of beauty that extend beyond our own limited, finite understandings.  "The Window" concludes with a sly twist ending that causes the reader to reevaluate what she previously understood the story to be about.

The second story, "The Cone," is perhaps the closest Živković comes to telling a Borgesian tale.  If anything, it is a clever inversion of Borges' "Borges and I," except here the story is told via the viewpoint of the younger self.  It is a story of not just revisiting old memories and scenes of personal enlightenment, but of a true singular visiting again.  It is a conceit worthy of a Pierre Menard and his attempt to not just recreate Don Quixote but to write the Don Quixote for a new age and yet Živković manages to pull this complex weaving of past/present together with aplomb.

The third tale, "The Bookshop," is more overtly SFnal than the other stories in the collection, as it concerns a connection between writers on two different planets somehow brought into contact with each other through the first author's seeming "conjuration" of the second's world.  In reading this, I was reminded favorably of one of Ray Bradbury's tales from The Martian Chronicles, "The Summer Night," particularly the merging of thoughts and "reality" for the recipient group.  Contained within is a subtle critique of science fiction and its influence on the shape of some people's dreams, although this element is subordinate to the larger theme of "impossible encounters."  Despite liking the constituent elements of this tale, "The Bookshop" was perhaps the weakest story in Impossible Encounters, perhaps because it is too easy to separate one of the two characters into an "alien" role, depriving the story of the intimacy that is present in the majority of the other tales.

"The Train" takes one of the enduring questions of Christendom, "What would I ask God if I were to meet him?," and turns it into a small, almost quotidian event.  A bank executive is traveling by train when he encounters a heavy-set middle-aged person in a dark suit who at first he confuses for a retired colonel until he strikes up a conversation and learns that this is God, who is offering him a no strings attached question that he may ask him.  The nature of the question and the response reaffirm this twisting about of common expectations of such an "impossible" encounter (after all, would you dare ask God, if possible, a petty question?).  This story's confounding of expectations causes its confusion to have a greater impact than it otherwise might have.

The fifth story, "The Confessional," inverts the preceding tale.  Here is a priest having Satan himself as a penitent.  Their conversion covers the nature of hell versus heaven, the guilt found in souls who do not themselves truly release their sins, and the troubles found within those who themselves are charged with the absolution of sinners.  It works separately from "The Train," yet when read one after the other, the two tales complement each other and build upon elements found within each of them, making these two, along with "The Window" my personal favorites from Impossible Encounters.

The final tale, "The Atelier," binds the five preceding stories together.  The title itself is a reference to the older form of artistic instruction, that of a true workshop in which the artist would train apprentices to produce elements of an artistic work which, when complete, would bear the master's name.  In it, the stories preceding it, all of which contained references to an unnamed author's Impossible Encounters, are shown to have a "realness" that extends beyond the author's conception of that word.  In it, the author enters into his own fiction and becomes a character, blurring the lines between what is "real" and "unreal."  It is a fitting coda to a collection that challenges its readers to reconsider how they view the world, its beauties and dangers, and themselves in relation to the worlds they live and which they inhabit in their dreams.  Impossible Encounters is a collection whose stories have haunted my thoughts for nearly a month since I last re-read it in both Serbian and English and it is perhaps slightly stronger than the preceding Time Gifts.  Highly recommended.

Zoran Živković, Vremenski darovi/Time Gifts

 Morao je da pobegne iz manastira.

Uopšte nije trebalo da se nalazi tu, nikada nije želeo da se zamonaši, kazao je to ocu, ali ovaj je bio neumoljiv, kao i uvek, a majka nije imala smelosti da mu se suproststavi, iako je znala da su sinovljeve naklonosti i nadarenosti na drugoj strani.  Kaluđeri su se od početka ophodili prema njemu rđavo, zlostavljali ga, ponižavali, terali da radi najprljavije poslove, a kada su počele njihove noćne posete, nije više mogao da izdrži.

Dao se u beg, a za njim je krenula čitava bulumenta zadrigle, razularene bratije, sa podignutim bakljama i zadignutim mantijama, skaredno podvriskujući, sigurna da im ne može umaći.  Noge su mu postajale sve olovnije dok se upinjao da se domogne manastirske kapije, koja kao da je hotimice uzmicala, bivajući mu svakim korakom sve dalja (p. 5)

He had to escape from the monastery.

He should not be there at all; he had never wanted to become a monk. He'd said that to his father, but his father had been unrelenting, as usual, and his mother did not have the audacity to oppose him, even though she knew that her son's inclinations and talents lay elsewhere. The monks had treated him badly from the beginning. They had abused and humiliated him, forced him to do the dirtiest jobs, and when their nocturnal visits commenced he could stand it no longer.

He set off in flight, and a whole throng of pudgy, unruly brothers started after him, screaming hideously, torches and mantles raised, certain he could not get away. His legs became heavier and heavier as he attempted to reach the monastery gate, but it seemed to be deliberately withdrawing, becoming more distant at every step. (Impossible Stories, p. 3.  Translation by Alice Copple-Tošić)

It is difficult to determine what would be the ideal starting point for reading Serbian writer Zoran Živković's fiction.  For some, the few novels that he has written may be appealing because of the space afforded for him to explore in greater depth the themes that interest him, but others might argue that his "story suites," the thematically-connected story collections that comprise the majority of his fiction, might be more representative of his work.  I myself first read Živković in translation back in 2004 when the American edition of his first novel, The Fourth Circle, came out, but as much as I enjoyed reading that novel, it wasn't until the following year, when I read the Prime Books edition of The Book/The Writer that I made a point of trying to track down any available copy of his work in a language that I could understand.  A few years ago, after someone related to him a story I had posted about a former student of mine who has severe autism and the reaction that student had when I read aloud to his class (after I learned of a classmate bullying him) the story "The Whisper" (from Seven Touches of Music), Živković contacted me by email to talk about the impact that story had.  Although we have been in touch infrequently over the years, a few years ago he offered me a set of his books in Serbian after hearing of my desire to learn how to read that language because of the many fine writers that country has produced over the past half-century.  Although I am a bit late (three years!) in truly resuming my study of the language, I am using the books he so graciously offered me as part of my language study.  Although it would be crass to say the reviews are "payment," I do think it is past time that I review more of his fictions and explore the ways in which the stories themselves appeal to me a few years since I last read them.  Hopefully these series of reviews, which will begin with the "story suites," will appeal to a wide range of readers who may not be familiar with his work.

Vremenski darovi (Time Gifts in English translation) is Živković's second book of fiction after The Fourth Circle.  Published in the late 1990s in both Serbia and the United States, Time Gifts serves as the prototype for Živković's subsequent short fiction collections, as the four stories contained within ("The Astronomer," "The Paleolinguist," "The Watchmaker," and "The Artist") share a form and approach that can be found in later collections such as Steps Through the Mist or Seven Touches of Music (both collected, along with Time Gifts, Impossible Encounters, The Library, and the stand-alone story "The Telephone" in the UK collection Impossible Stories).  Events that transpire in one story often find a hidden resonance in another, with surprising results.

The first story, "The Astronomer," begins with a single individual and a strong, almost overwhelming desire.  A simple "he" (we do not learn his identity until later in the story) wants to escape from a monastery.  This monastery, which may be in Italy, Spain, or near Mount Athos, or any other secluded holy retreat in-between, appears to be inhabited by seemingly nefarious monks who are chasing this wannabe escapee.  The reader's attention is drawn immediately to the action of the story with only the barest framework of a plot established.  We only know he is there unwillingly, that his family opposes his wishes, and that he is on the run from a band of monks who are after him.  It is not until he eludes capture that we are given insight to his story and it is one that involves time and space, science and religion, and the pride within the titular astronomer.  As is often the case in Živković's fictions, choices are laid out in an overlapping fashion.  Does this astronomer choose to live by denial of what he has observed, or does he die in denial of what others hold to be true?  Although it might be suspected that such a weighty choice would be important to the story, it surprisingly isn't.  This is not due to carelessness on Živković's part, but rather it is a purposely open-ended question that forces the reader to engage what is transpiring around the astronomer's choice.  What would we choose in such a situation?  How does the viewing centuries forward into time affect what occurs afterward?  The reader is left to ponder this at story's end.

"The Paleolinguist" begins with a lonely, somewhat befuddled expert in old (and likely "dead") languages confused and startled by a sudden knock:

The knock echoed loudly in the hollow silence, making her start.

She had not heard the steps approaching the door to her office.  She must have dozed off again.  Her head bowed, chin upon her chest, her round, wire-rimmed reading glasses had slipped to the tip of her nose.  The book remained open in front of her on the desk in the lamplight, but she was still drowsy and could not remember its title right away.  These catnips were becoming more and more frequent, causing her to feel very ill at ease.  Not because someone might find her in that unseemly position.  She was not afraid of that; almost no one visited her anymore, not even her students, let alone her colleagues.  She was an embarrassment to herself. (p. 22)

Although certainly less threatening than having a bunch of monks chasing you at night across a field, "The Paleolinguist" too opens with a sudden intrusion into the protagonist's life.  Like the astronomer, the paleolinguist is confronted by a mysterious personage, one who offers not a vision (real or not) of the future, but instead a chance to visit the past, to see if her theories on ancient languages are true, perhaps with the opportunity to change the past.  It is something that is too good to be true, perhaps, and that precisely is the point around which the story revolves.  What "butterfly effects" could occur?  Is there something nefarious about these "gifts of time," which appear in this story (and the others) in a variety of forms and metaphors?  This awaits the third story for more development.

"The Watchmaker" builds upon one of the time metaphors, that of the glass-encased watch, and it explores the ways in which we attempt to control time (and in turn are controlled by it).  The titular watchmaker, like many of Živković's characters, is in turns meticulous and oblivious to the outside world.  Timekeeping is fraught with dangers:  the smallest particle can delay the gear turning "just so" after enough turns that time is "lost" or no longer as accurate as before.  Here the mysterious visitor of the previous stories reappears in a different guise, this time with the conversation moving from simply a movement forward or backward in time toward that of paradoxes, of choices that can paralyze those who have foreknowledge or emboldened those who are ignorant of what comes before or after.  It is not an original concept, but Živković's deceptively simple prose recasts these as a series of idle musings that yet feel as though they are anything but simple musings.

By the time the final story, "The Artist," appears, the concept of time and the fantasies that we often have about the "what if" of our seeing our futures, changing our pasts, or revisiting the choices that we continually make in our lives have been developed along several lines.  The frame character appears here in his most straightforward guise.  If the astronomer seeks to capture the movement of celestial time, the paleolinguist the linguistic river along which human concepts have flowed over time, the watchmaker the encapsulation of time within a machine, the artist's conception of time encompasses each of these.  This artist, a she, knows what happens to the other three after their "time gifts" have been granted.  Furthermore, she knows the consequences that follow them, not to mention the sort of apparent omnipresence that flows through these stories.  Here metaphor and plot fuse into a almost seamless (seemless?) conclusion in which the events of the four constituent stories meld together to form a larger metanarrative that informs each individual story and makes them more meaningful than perhaps they were when each reached their conclusions. 

The overall effect is akin to that of a daydreamer awakening from her state of semi-consciousness.  The river of thoughts and images, before drying up in the harsh heat of wakefulness, leaves a residue behind for that daydreaming soul.  So too do the stories of Time Gifts leave behind traces of the storyteller's musings.  The language of these tales, simple, direct, and yet containing a profundity of thought that most complexly-crafted narratives fail to achieve, loses little in translation.  Although I am still a novice in reading Serbian, I could understand the gist of the narratives and Copple-Tošić's translation does an excellent job in capturing the tone and feel of Živković's prose.  Readers familiar with the stories of the Argentine great Jorge Luis Borges will find in Živković a kindred storyteller, as each seems to translates the idle thoughts of their lives into stories that gently probe those interstices between lives and deeds that make stories so appealing to so many.  Time Gifts is a collection that shows the writer just beginning to explore these connections, yet there is rarely the sense that anything is underdeveloped or overplayed.  Highly recommended.

Two year-spanning reading/reviewing projects

Just a brief head's up for those who might be interested:  starting shortly and spanning the rest of the year, I plan on engaging in two long-term reading/reviewing projects.  The first dovetails with my renewed study of the Serbian language.  About three years ago, one of my favorite writers, Zoran Živković, was so gracious as to send me copies of virtually all of his books then in print in the original Serbian, as he had heard that I planned on one day learning his native language.  Although I was delayed these past few years, I have resumed my studies and roughly every two weeks or so, I plan on reading the books he sent me in Serbian, compare them to the English translations that I have, and write reviews for the books that I have not yet reviewed over the past six years.  It's the least I could do, even if I had delays in doing so.

The second reading/reviewing project will debut likely this week first on Gogol's Overcoat and then later in the year here.  I plan on re-reading and reviewing the fiction of Flannery O'Connor, with a single short story or novel most of the remaining weeks in 2013.  Last year's Faulkner reviews, which I did pause in completing after 15 installments and plan on resuming at some point in the future, were some of my favorites to write and they helped me in my development as a critical reviewer.  Since I rate O'Connor very close to Faulkner in terms of quality (not to mention she provides another view of my beloved/sometimes-hated native American South), hopefully these reviews will expose more readers to her excellent fictions.

Of course, all things are subject to change, but I shall do my best to cover as many of their works this year as possible.  Combined, they're only a little over 40 reviews that involve reading in most cases less than 150 pages per review, so it shouldn't be too much of a strain.

A very wonderful passage from Zoran Živković's The Five Wonders of the Danube

Remember how I said my ability to read quickly was actually due to Serbian reading squirrels?  Well, this passage from The Five Wonders of the Danube made me happy:

She thought he would be right back but an enormous squirrel appeared in his place.  The prompter backed away again, although not as far as she had the first time.  She liked squirrels.  She wasn't aware that they came this big, but why not?  Dogs came in different sizes too.

The squirrel knocked on the metal edge of the box, then picked up a book and started to read in a soft voice.  The prompter was not very surprised.  If dogs can clap, why shouldn't squirrels read?  They weren't any less intelligent than dogs.  On the contrary.  And they didn't need to be trained.  They learned everything by themselves.  Just like hedgehogs.

Yet one more reason to finish reading and later review this Živković book (and others that I have yet to review), as well as one more example of why squirrels are awesome creatures that make anything in which they appear better (minus soups, recipes, hunting shows, and the like).

You now may be jealous of my book collection once again ;)

My copy of Zoran Živković's latest work, the 2011 The Five Wonders of the Danube, just arrived after I ordered it from Serbia a couple of weeks ago.  I've been a fan of his work for nearly eight years now, ever since the English translation of his The Fourth Circle was published in the United States.  If you'll do a search by his tagline here, you'll see a few reviews that I have written, along with some lovely books, some of which he sent me himself – pictured below – to help me with my Serbian (I still plan on eventually working my way through all of them and reviewing them; I've just been delayed by other demands on my time).  Maybe 2012 will be the year that I review more of Živković's excellent work, as he truly deserves greater attention, whether one associates him/herself as being a "literary" or "genre" reader.  Expect a review of The Five Wonders of the Danube sometime this month, if time permits.

Zoran Živković, Писац у Најам (The Ghostwriter)

It should be no secret that Serbian author Zoran Živković is, in my opinion at least, one of the best storytellers writing today.  Over the past few years, I have reviewed several of his short fiction "story suites" (such as Steps Through the Mist and Twelve Collections and the Teashop) and his novel-length works (the most recent being the just-released UK edition of Escher's Loops).  Almost without exception (leaving a bit of room for subjective "rankings" of books within that I shall never reveal to others openly), his stories have belied their short, simple appearance, divulging depths of theme and characterization that can pleasantly surprise a reader wanting merely a quick read and instead discovering an absorbing read that rarely fails to inform as well as entertain.  This is certainly the case with Živković's most recent short novel, Pisac u Najam (English translation being The Ghostwriter), a fiction that is only available in Serbian editions (although I believe PS Publishing will be releasing the UK edition either late this year or sometime in 2011).

The Ghostwriter begins rather simply:  the Writer, whose real name is never expressed in the book, receives an interesting proposition from a pseudonymous Admirer:  write a novel for the Admirer and sign the rights over to the Admirer.  While one might wonder at first just how such a seemingly simple affair can be the basis of a novel that's 127 pages in the original, as one reads on, that reader will discover a cleverness to the story that promises a resolution before looping into something far deeper and more moving than someone trying to hire out the Writer (I should note that the Serbian title, Pisac u Najam, literally means "writer for hire").

Živković fleshes out this story by utilizing a mixture of emails and breaks to his feline companion, Felix.  As the mystery behind the Admirer grows, the Writer finds himself interrupted, first by Felix (whose feline foibles are recounted fondly by the Writer) and then from four email regulars, each of them with his or her own agendas.  At first, these interruptions seem to distract from the mystery of the Admirer and just why s/he would want the Writer to write a novel and sign it off to that pseudonymous Admirer.  However, Živković artfully imbues each succeeding email and the persons behind them with his or her own quirky and fascinating personas.  Just why is a jealous fellow writer emailing the Writer so much?  Why is a half-crazed woman detailing her dreams to the Writer, who she refers to by his email pseudonym (and his cat's name) of Felix?  Why is another aspiring writer composing pastiches of the Writer's works and signing them off as the Writer himself?  Why is another woman begging the Writer to compose a story that would cheer her ailing dog Albert?

As the Writer struggles to keep pace with their demands and to figure out more about their increasingly odd demands, not to mention still trying to suss out who this Admirer might be, the reader perhaps has shifted his or her focus away from just the issue of the startling proposal from the Admirer to that of the Writer's life and those who flit and move about through it.   Živković manages to not just delay the payoff to the entire angle, but to create new webs that are interwoven with this first, seemingly central mystery.  This narrative tension rises until the final two paragraphs in the novel, when the clues to not just the Admirer's identity, but also to the real subject of this tale, are revealed in a way that surprised me and yet made the entire story all the more meaningful for how adroitly Živković managed to delay me finding out if my suspicions were correct (in fact, they were wrong and yet in hindsight I should have known better, which is a testimony to the author and not a condemnation of my abilities as a reader).

The Ghostwriter, although it is more narrow in its focus and not as all-encompassing as was Escher's Loops, was yet another enjoyable read.  The characters were developed through their words and not their actions, but yet there was this sense that behind the words, much was transpiring that had to be imagined more than just discovered from reading the text.  The prose was in some fashions similar to that of Živković's Hidden Camera, with each having their own quirky, mildly obsessive protagonists.  However, The Ghostwriter contains allusions to certain quasi-Faustian deals that writers have to make that part of the fun here was seeing just how (or if) the Writer would ever break and give in to the desires of those surrounding him.  I suspect a re-read will reveal even more layerings here.  As it stands, The Ghostwriter was a great read and should be sought after whenever the English-language editions become available in the non-Serbian market.  Highly recommended.


Note:   Živković was kind enough to send me a collection of his fictions in English translation that were published in Serbia last year, called Novels.  I read both the translation and the Serbian original in parallel over the past few days, so some of my impressions will be colored by this unusual method of reading a story.

Received lovely books in the mail these past two days

I just received a copy of Zoran Živković's omnibus, Novels, sent to me by the author himself.  The book is seen here contemplating its place among several other august titles.  Although I have already thanked him in private, this gift was a very generous one to me, especially considering how many excellent fictions are contained here.  Perhaps in the future this omnibus (which is in English translation) will be published in some form in the US and/or UK markets; this is the Serbian release.  Živković is one of the few authors I place pre-orders on, regardless of price, and hopefully there will be readers here who will be curious and look into buying some of his fiction, which is available in the UK from PS Publishing and in the US from Aio, Dalkey Archive, Prime Books, Night Shade Books, Wildside Press (his "The Library" serves as a bridge for the outstanding Leviathan 3 anthology), and Northwestern University Press.  I usually don't list publishing information, so take this exception as a hint that his stories are available from a variety of sources and that they are well worth whatever amount of money you spend on them.  How's that for high praise?

Edit:  Received the second half of the shipment (strange that they didn't arrive together, since they were mailed at the same time).  Here are five lovely Japanese editions (but in English translation) of several of  Živković's "story suites", or sets of interconnected short stories.  These are uniformly excelent and they probably fit in nicely with the books in the background.

Zoran Živković, Escher's Loops

For the past six years, ever since I picked up a copy of his The Fourth Circle, I have always had great pleasure in reading anything that Serbian author Zoran Živković has written.  In previous reviews of Steps Through the Mist and Twelve Collections and the Teashop, I discussed how Živković's less-is-more approach toward storytelling appeals to me as a reader.  I enjoy being allowed the freedom to approach stories at cross-angles, without the author intruding too much into the text that s/he has created.  In virtually all of Živković's stories, whether they be part of his "story suite" mosaics or more traditional novel-length tales, he leaves plenty of gaps through which an imaginative reader can delve further into the mysteries hinted at but often never directly stated within the texts.

One device that Živković utilizes in several of his stories (and one that José Saramago uses to great effect in his Blindness and Seeing novels, among others) is labeling the characters by profession rather than by name.  This creates a sort of "everyman" type of character; could be me or you or that guy or gal across the street.  It also allows for a subtle distancing of the characters from the settings, creating a sense of "otherness" cohabiting with mundane existence.  But does this sort of storytelling approach, which owes much to centuries' worth of Central European fables, hold up when expanded to a 330 page novel?

When I learned that Escher's Loops would combine the elements that Živković employs in his story suites with the length of a novel, I worried that the result might be somewhat of a mess to follow.  After all, when there are bifurcating stories that are designed to loop around and back into a broader narrative, patterned on Escher's most famous illustration, there is a real risk for the inattentive reader becoming lost in what is unfolding.  However, this was far from the case for me, as these "loops," broken down into four main movements/sections, actually augmented the joy I had while reading the narrative.

To best illustrate what Živković is doing, let me quote from the very beginning of the story:

The surgeon had just dried his hands in a stream of hot air from the hand dryer next to the wash basin, pulled on his gloves and headed for the operating room, when a sudden recollection made him stop in front of the double glass door.  Even though he was urgently awaited inside, the thought disconcerted him so much that he was rooted to the spot.

Those who knew him better would certainly have assumed that he'd remembered the incident he most wanted to forget.  It was the only stain on his career.  He'd left surgical tweezers inside a patient.  There was no excuse for this oversight.  What could he say in his defense?  That he'd been captivated by her face and couldn't keep his eyes off her?  The anesthesia had seemed to bestow an angelic quality on the beautiful young woman.  Mentioning this enchantment as the cause of his distraction would only have aggravated his position. (p. 5)

As I noted above, there is no wasting of time giving this character a name.  The surgeon has had something unusual (and embarrassing) happen.  There is a moment of thought and recollection and then the story branches from there, seeking out others in the environs who have had experiences, both good and bad, and how each of their lives, whether they be the Dylanesque priest who plays pinball or the priest who takes pictures of birds, of the failed suicide who has attempted suicide seventeen times before having an epiphany, or of the beautiful actress and her admirer, are interconnected with one another's.  Živković is not heavy-handed in this.  He introduces (and re-introduces) these characters in different forms and it feels so casual that the reader at first may wonder where s/he had read about that particular character before.

The overall effect is like a woven tapestry of images.  The life threads that run through our own lives are put through the warp and woof before being re-thread back into our life journeys.  The same holds true for Živković's characters.  Although failure, frustration, and death greet several of his characters, there is this sense of optimism that pervades this story.  Živković does not focus as much on suffering as much as on how experiences end up enriching the lives of the characters involved.  This sense of optimism makes for a suitable ending to these interconnected life threads that constitute Escher's Loops.  Certainly one of the more enjoyable reads I have had this year and on par with Živković's other fictions.  Very highly recommended.

Zoran Živković, Book Porn? Possibly the strangest title I've written yet for this blog

This afternoon, I was taking a break from emails and interview question compositions to read through a few of the SF/F forums that I frequent on occasion.  On one of them, someone listed a bunch of titles she had recently acquired and which she ought to read first.  One of them was the PS Publishing English translation of Serbian author Zoran Živković's Escher's Loops.  I said that ought to be the one she ought to read.  Then I started to think a bit...

First, I was wondering if my preordered copy would be arriving soon (will email Pete Crowther later about that, since I changed debit cards since placing the order last autumn), then I started to think about the PS titles of Živković's that I had already purchased (all pictured above), and then I started thinking about just how much I've enjoyed his works over the years, going so far as to acquire some of them in Serbian (along with two American editions of earlier novels), pictured below:

Consider this not just book porn, but an endorsement for an author whose works I've enjoyed for six years now.  Oh, and before any ask why there's an apparent Dune title there, well, guess who did the Serbian translation?  Amazing what one can find when browsing online retailers...

June 16th Book Porn

Two recent 2008 releases arrived today and since I anticipate even more later this week and next (receiving my stimulus check this week and 50% of it is going towards book, 50% in savings), I just wanted to draw attention to these two books.

The first is Zoran Živković's The Last Book, a murder-mystery/"literary"/"speculative" novel. I read this 188 page book this afternoon and while it'll be a week or two at least before I write the review, I found it to be on the whole quite enjoyable, with the "bookish" elements making for an interesting twist. Shall be interesting to see the reaction to the denouement, as I suspect many will be divided on its efficacy. I, however, enjoyed it.

The second book I saw posted in the Recommended Books section recently on Jeff VanderMeer's blog and since it seems he and I have similar tastes, I decided to give Francie Lin's The Foreigner a shot. I'll be reading it tomorrow, but I do have high hopes for this debut novel based on the bits and pieces I've read by opening the book on random pages. Of course, blurbage such as "this violent plunge into the abyss of identity" is going to draw my attention the majority of the time. Hopefully, I'll have the time to share my thoughts on this book by early July.

2008 Shirley Jackson Award Finalist: Zoran Živković, Twelve Collections and the Teashop

In a day and age where it seems that even speculative fiction writers aim to pack as much descriptive verbiage into their stories as possible (often with deleterious consequences), it is refreshing to read stories written by authors who go in the opposite direction; their stories place a premium on the readers' imaginative abilities to unpack meaning from just a few scant words.

Serbian author Zoran Živković is one of those blessed few authors. Ever since I read his first novel released in the US, The Fourth Circle, back in 2004, I have marveled over how much depth there is to be found in stories that rarely go past 20 pages. In Twelve Collections and the Teashop, a 2007 limited-edition UK release (no known US release date), Živković has written perhaps one of his best "story suites" to date.

In the introduction, Michael Moorcock discusses how Živković's writing reflects an older European fabulist tradition, one that was lost in the West with the rise of the Naturalists/Modernists and their (over)emphasis on verisimilitude. Moorcock posits that Eastern European authors such as Živković, who came of age during the police state mentality of the Iron Curtain years, learned that being too specific was a risky matter and that much could be done with everywhere cities and such-and-such people. While this deliberate vagueness might annoy those who prefer focusing on the facts and not the vision behind the story plots, others have found the dreamlike qualities of such tales to be intoxicating, sucking one into reading and then considering what might be transpiring rather than just what really is happening there.

Twelve Collections and the Teashop is a double novella, consisting of twelve thematically-linked stories on some rather odd (and sometimes sinister) collections and one that revolves around a teashop. In these stories, mundane features are transformed by just a few subtle foreshadowing clues, such as color or smell. Take for instance the opening story, "Days," and its Prince-like purple phase:

When I entered the pastry shop, a purple wave swept over me. Almost every surface was in some shade of this color: the wallpaper, curtains, rugs, tablecloths, chair covers. So were the shades on the lighted table lamps. The muted light gave even the air a purple tint.

I squinted and looked around. Not a single one of the six small round tables with three chairs was occupied. The pastry chef was standing behind the display counter, wiping a glass with a purple napkin. His apron was inevitably of the same tone as everything else. He seemed more stocky than stout, and a thick, cropped beard and mustache compensated for his shiny bald head. (pp. 3-4)

The repetitive mentions of purple suffused throughout the shop, when juxtaposed with the rather commonplace chef serves to point out a dissonance between the "realness" of the characters and the otherworldiness of the pastry shop itself. As this story progresses and the reason for the "purpleness" is revealed, there is a hidden commentary of sorts about the PoV character and his/her reaction to the revelation by the pastry chef regarding the specialness of his pastry skills and the reason why things are so purple. Živković does not beat the reader over the head with this; he merely insinuates more levels are to be found within a few words. It is up to the reader to consider things even further.

From this opening story, the remaining eleven collections deal with disparate things such as final stories, words, and dreams. These are some of the most "human" of collections and Živković illustrates these via the characters' desires, temptations, and moments of hope and/or despair. Often, as in the case of the story "Clippings," there is a focus on the struggle between order and disorder, on the things that unite and on the heralds of entropy:

After several weeks had passed with still no letter, Mr. Pospihal concluded dejectedly that a great conspiracy was at work and, alas, he alone could do nothing against it. Disorder had triumphed over order, and all he could do was stand by helplessly and watch.

Overcome by frustration, the first thing he did was destroy his collection. As with everything else in his life, he did it systematically. He took a large pair of scissors, sharpened them a bit and then cut all the articles together with their purple folders into small pieces of the same size. And then, for the first time in his life, he did something unreasonable. He ate this plastic-coated confetti slowly and determinedly, even though the taste was quite abominable. (p. 58)

In a very real sense, it is this conflict between the ordered natures of these collectors and the often-chaotic elements around them that makes these twelve stories a delight to read and then to ponder afterwards. In the final story in this book, "The Teashop," another facet of this conflict is revealed, as Miss Greta is choosing teas from a rather odd menu:

She didn't have to open the long, thin menu with a cover of the same green. In the afternoon she always drank chamomile tea. Suddenly, though, she decided to make an exception. The circumstances were unusual and there were so few deviations from daily routine in her life. She shouldn't have been there at all, but since chance had brought her to the teashop, why not make good use of it? An impish desire filled her to do something reckless in a place where no one knew her. She would order the tea that seemed the most unusual.

The menu had four densely-filled pages. She'd never heard of most of the teas and had tried only a few, even though she'd been drinking this hot beverage in the morning and afternoon regularly since childhood. Reading through the splendid selection, she wondered with a tinge of sorrow why she limited herself to the humdrum. This had once seemed a virtue, but now she could not remember why. She shouldn't be inhibited, at least as far as tea was concerned. Now was the chance to make up a little for what she'd missed, albeit belatedly. (p. 87)

Temptation can be quite a terrible thing to witness and in a great many stories, it begins the road to ruin, or at least to transformation. "The Teashop" is a fitting close to an excellent "story suite" whose stories and their conclusions will leave most considering things well after the final page has been turned. Most highly recommended.

Publication Date: April 2007 (UK), Limited-Edition Hardcover

Publisher: PS Publishing

Review of Zoran Živković's Steps Through the Mist

In a genre where the readers often equate the value of a book with its size or how exhaustive the author details the scenery (or "worldbuilding," as many now call this recent phenomenon of trying to make an imagined setting feel as "literal" or "real" as possible), there is something to be said for an author who writes in a shorter, more sparse style and who eschews dictating everything that is to be seen or to be read into a piece of fiction. In Serbian author Zoran Živković's latest mosaic novel to be translated into English, Steps Into the Mist, his five interconnected stories are deceptively slight, with only just enough detail to allow each story's plot to flow to conclusions that surprise the reader in the depth of meanings and reactions that they can provoke.

"Disorder in the Head" begins the sequence and with its bland, vaguely-described setting, the impatient reader might be quick to dismiss this as being an insubstantial short fiction that fails to grab the reader's attention. Such a reader would end up being gravely mistaken for trying to apply the "show, not tell" mantra to this tale, because the lack of specific description actually plays a major role in setting up the plot twist that turns this tale into a provocative opener. In addition, the "mist" of the title makes its first appearance and will be seen in other guises in the remaining stories.

The second story, "Hole in the Wall," contains a short but revealing passage that reveals in part what this "mist" might be, perhaps:

"Until recently, that was the same attitude I had toward the future," she [Katarina] said in a voice full of understanding. "What will be will be. A person has little influence, if any at all. We enter the mist, not knowing what awaits us there. Then, after the accident, everything changed."

In this particular story, the "mist" has a threatening overtone, as if it were of innumerable futures that contained pain and misery and discontent, among other, opaque features that frustrated the characters. This overtone, ominous as it sounds, is not the only way of interpreting this symbolic "mist" of the stories, however, as the following pieces reveal.

"Geese in the Mist" has a quality about it that takes many pauses and re-reads for one to be able to grasp it fully. It is a story of a woman on a ski lift and a mysterious stranger appearing and telling her of a momentous change, similar to the Chaos Theory aphorism of the butterfly beating its wings and through that action triggering a chain of events that might prove cataclysmic elsewhere, that would occur with which route the woman would choose down the ski loft. As the woman (and by extension, the reader) is left wondering as to what to do, Živković slyly has us consider the possibilities before having the story take a route that perhaps might be unexpected, perhaps be totally outside the bounds, depending of course upon the reader's expectations.

The fourth tale, "Line on the Palm," is perhaps the most tragic of these tales, but it is also one of the more powerful stories in this excellent mosaic novel. Set in a palm reader's shop and with a wink and a nod to the skeptic who dismisses such things as feel-good foolishness, this tale deals with fate as a notion and perhaps as an actual force and how our actions, similar to those of the characters in the ancient Greek tragedies, often cause our own fates to be as bad as we believe them to be. The "mist" in this tale is as much a tragic symbol than it is anything actual.

The final tale, "Alarm Clock on the Night Table," contains a deep and sad metaphor in its middle:

"These two gears here are broken. They're worn out. Unfortunately, they are highly important. You might say they are the heart of the clock. And nothing can work without a heart, isn't that so? If this were a newer model it would be easy to replace them, but no one makes spare parts anymore for such old models. The manufacturers are better off selling you a new one." He [the watchmaker] sighed and turned to look at the wall covered with silent clocks. "Just like your clock, all of these could have kept time and woken people up, if only there had been parts for them."

In this, the final tale, the "mist" perhaps could stand for things outside of our everyday, timed existences. However, there are more layers to this than what such a trite summation as that would reveal. Živković's purposeful vagueness, akin to the ever-morphing "mist" of these stories, serves to point out just how so often we feel as though our lives are but journeys in which each step is shrouded in a fog-like cover, obscuring not just our destination, but also our origins and desires. There is a dreamlike quality to each of these superb tales, with multiple meanings awaiting those who are willing to imagine instead of awaiting for authorial explication.

Summary: Steps Through the Mist is a mosaic novel of five thematically-connected stories, each narrated by a different female character, that explores in a detached and surrealistic fashion many of the doubts and fears that we have about our everyday lives. Živković writes with a minimal amount of detail, but his writing is much stronger for leaving so much for us to flesh out in our own imaginations. With these multiple possible takes on the tales, comparisons to Borges or Calvino would not only be likely, they would be apt. Highly recommended collection from this World Fantasy Award-winning author.

Publication Date: September 2007 (US), Hardcover

Publisher: Aio Publishing Company

Zoran Živković Interview

Thanks again to her for doing this for me. Zoran Zivkovic is a Serbian author of books such as The Fourth Circle and the Book/the Writer that have recently been translated into English. I consider him to be one of the better writers out there today and hopefully this interview Lotesse conducted will help convince others here to read his works.

Q. Who would you say are some of the writers that influenced you the most? After reading the Book/the Writer, I couldn't help but think of Jorge Luis Borges and his Library, so I'm just curious.

A. I would say that Luis Borges' influence is more evident in another book of mine—The Library. Many authors contributed, one way or another, in forming me as a writer. Sometimes it's rather hard, even for myself, to identify various influences, although there are many intertextual references in my fiction. I believe my entire reading experience is contained in it. Everything I have ever read, although may seem partly forgotten on the conscious level, is always very vivid and active in my subconscious—and that's where all my fiction comes from. So, I am not going to pick out specific authors and say that they influenced me the most. All of them were equally important and I am equally grateful to all of them.

Q. I read where you used to be an academic that focused on science fiction. What would you say are some of the differences between being one who reviews what others have written and writing fiction yourself, in terms of focus and preparation?

A. Although reviewing is also a responsible and creative job (or it should be, ideally), it's less demanding and ambitious than the actual literary creation. It is one thing to interpret a world and another to create it...

Q. Why speculative fiction? What made you choose to focus on that rather than some other literary field?

A. Why do you think I am a speculative fiction writer? Besides, what is "speculative fiction," after all? No, I consider myself a writer without any prefixes, because they can be either limiting or misleading. I like to define myself as "a humble practitioner of the ancient and noble art of prose writing." Nothing more, nothing less.

Q. Your books have begun recently appearing in English translation. What are some of the differences you've noticed between American publishers and editors compared to ones in Serbia?

A. There are practically no differences. Since you have read my novel The Book, you had a chance to see how difficult their lives could be...

Q. Any chance of you revisiting the characters that appear in The Fourth Circle?

A. You mean to write a sequel? Something like The Daughter of the Fourth Circle? Or, maybe, The Fifth Circle? That isn't going to happen, most definitely. The covers of my novel are firmly closed, not to be opened again. Besides, what else could I say? That story is fully told.

Q. You've done some work with Fantastic Metropolis, among others. How important do you believe online magazines such as FM and other fansites will become on the speculative fiction publishing industry?

A. Independent fansites are tremendously important in reintroducing democracy in a world dominated by the publishing industry. They are here to show that there are other values in fantasy writing beside being just another way of making profit.

Q. How do you approach writing a story? Do you have a particular ending in mind, or do you begin with an idea and just write from there? Or is it a combination?

A. I suggest you read my afterword to the limited US edition of The Fourth Circle (Night Shade Books, 2004). I have extensively explained there how I write.

Q. The Fourth Circle and the Book/the Writer are already available in the United States. When can we expect more English translations of your stories?

A. My first book to appear in English translation was Time Gifts (2000). In 2005 two more books of mine will appear in English: Hidden Camera (Dalkey Archive Press) and Impossible Stories—a "mega" collection comprising my five story-suits: Time Gifts, Impossible Encounters, Seven Touches of Music, The Library and Steps through the Mist: a total of 29 stories. The new UK magazine "Postscripts" just brought out, in issue #2, my recent novelette Compartments, while my latest book, Four Stories till the End, will be serialized also in "Postscripts" (#4–#7). So, by the end of 2005 all my fiction will be available in English.

Q. What trends have you noticed developing in speculative fiction recently, both in Europe and the Americas?

A. There are currently many excellent young and relatively young authors who are forming the prevailing trend in the world speculative fiction (however you define it). Let me name just a few of them: Jeff VanderMeer, Jeffrey Ford, K.J. Bishop, Paul di Filippo, China Miéville. They are the future classics of the art of fantasy writing.

Q. What do you feel is the most powerful scene you have written? Why?

A. I have no right to answer that question. As an author, I have to be totally impartial.

Q. How would you entice people who haven't read you to do so?

A. I never entice people to read my fiction. That wouldn't be fair. I rather let them discover my humble self by chance.

Q. Did the work of translating fantasy/SF authors to Serbian language influence your writing?

A. Yes. My many years invested into translating eventually paid off as a time of learning from masters how to write.

Q. Are you somehow related to Dobroslav Bob Zivkovic?

A. No.

Q. Over the years, you were editing the SF section of 'Politikin Zabavnik'. Combined with the illustrations of Bob Zivkovic, those stories were responsible in developing my love towards fantasy. What did that work mean to you?

A. If the small seeds I planted through "Politikin Zabavnik" eventually bore some fruits, then I am the happiest man in the world.

Q. When can we expect your next book?

A. I just completed Four Stories till the End. I most definitely need some break. Remember, I am already 56...