Youchan Itoh, the talented artist who is handling the cover art for the Zoran Živković collection, has published a lovely blogpost on how she did it.
It’s in Japanese, of course, but the pictures tell most of the story!
We are delighted to announce the publication of the first two books in the Zoran Živković Collection:
Both feature stunning covers by Japanese artist Youchan Ito, and are available at Amazon and major booksellers worldwide. Refer to the individual book pages for more information!
Serbian author Zoran Živković has earned a devoted legion of readers around the world with his thought-provoking, surrealistic works, in a multitude of languages and editions. Cadmus Press is proud to present the first complete collection of his books in matching hardcover editions featuring the stunning artwork of Japanese illustrator Youchan Ito. Each volume is available individually, and the entire hardcover collection of eleven volumes may also be purchased as a set.
…arguably the most remarkable fabulist since Borges and Calvino.— Michael Dirda, Washington Post
Though it is too soon to crown Zoran Živković the new Borges, Seven Touches of Music makes him a leading candidate.—The New York Times Book Review
…unexpected beauty and surprise. […] Zivkovic is seeking to communicate something about the nature of life and death, of existence and non-existence, which bends perception into new and challenging shapes.—Strange Horizons
…A curious liminality which seems inherent in his prose: there is always a sense of something else, and something other, at work in Živković’s worlds, albeit invisibly. He is a writer of subtlety, and of humanity.—Strange Horizons
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Translated from Serbian by Vuk Tošić
Part of The Zoran Živković Collection
THE FINAL PART OF THE PAPYRUS TRILOGY
When certain mysterious events involving books occur, it seems that Inspector Dejan Lukić is always the man for the job. This time, however, things are a little different. Inspector Lukić himself is at the heart of the mystery, lured by the appearance of a number of packages addressed to him in person and left at several highly unlikely locations. The contents of these packages – a set of books known as The Compendium of the Dead – a series of bizarre disappearances and a succession of strange encounters keep the baffled Inspector on his toes right up until the extraordinary dénouement, in which the finality of death itself is challenged. In this, the final part of the trilogy that began with The Last Book and The Grand Manuscript, Zoran Živković demonstrates beyond contradiction the magical and ultimately benevolent power of literature.
Included in The Papyrus Trilogy.
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Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
Part of The Zoran Živković Collection
THE SECOND PART OF THE PAPYRUS TRILOGY
An empty apartment, locked from the inside: this is the mystery that literature-loving police inspector Dejan Lukić, hero of Zoran Živković’s The Last Book, is called in to solve. What has become of the woman who lives there, bestselling detective fiction writer Jelena Jakovljević? And, perhaps more importantly still, what has happened to the manuscript of her newly-completed novel, Find Me? As Inspector Lukić becomes ever more entangled in the growing mystery, a highly-strung literary agent, a blind painter, a virtuoso lock-picker and various cutthroat publishers all have their part to play in an elaborate game of misdirection and pursuit. Not to mention the dark powers of the National Security Agency and a secret cult seeking the key to immortality. Once again, Inspector Lukić stands at the heart of a literary conundrum only he can solve and through which he stands to gain—or lose—everything.
Included in The Papyrus Trilogy.
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Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
Part of The Zoran Živković Collection
THE FIRST PART OF THE PAPYRUS TRILOGY
A series of mysterious deaths in the Papyrus Bookstore brings literature-loving police inspector Dejan Lukić to investigate. Here he meets the attractive owner, Vera Gavrilović, and learns that the only thing the victims have in common is that in the moments before their deaths they were reading an elusive and unidentified volume — The Last Book.
As the plot thickens and the seemingly causeless deaths multiply, the National Security Agency, a secret apocalyptic sect and an exotic teashop become involved, while Dejan and Vera’s growing attachment is threatened by nightmares and ever-encroaching danger. Is a literary madman on the loose, murdering readers according to the method laid down in The Name of the Rose?
In a final race against time, Inspector Lukić must discover the secret of The Last Book and the reason why he feels as though he has already read everything that is happening to him in a novel. The extraordinary denouement reveals hidden truths about the clash of realities and the awesome power of the creative imagination.
Included in The Papyrus Trilogy.
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Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
Part of The Zoran Živković Collection
The Writer: A Very Short Novel, without Chapters, about Writing and Darkness
Where does all the writing come from? Is it divine inspiration, a bolt of lightning that reveals a whole new work in a single glimpse, or a unique gift granted by demonic forces to penetrate the darkness and see beyond it? Two fundamental principles of the most noble of all arts are in the permanent collision, surrounded by the contagious environment of the authors’ vanity, envy, malice.
The Ghostwriter
A writer sits down to work, but who can resist the addictive temptation of the email inbox? Each message alert brings a new question and a fresh challenge, until a tangled web weaves its way around the hapless author. Yet all the while his cat, Felix, gets on with life regardless. Zoran Zivkovic’s hilarious new novella lays bare the oddities and absurdities of the writing life: the traps writers set for themselves and the snares readers lay for them. Here, too, are fascinating puzzles about the nature of authorship and the writer’s identity, the relationship between the writer and their work and between the writer and the reader, the reader and that which is read. Above all, though, it is a paean to the Cat, to a relationship which in its simplicity and innocence, its playfulness and affection, makes nonsense of all these human perplexities.
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Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
Part of The Zoran Živković Collection
Once again Zivkovic demonstrates the sheer power of storytelling in this complex cycle of interlocking narratives. Like one of Escher’s drawings, the narrative threads lead one through a dizzying labyrinth of recurring themes, images and characters, all of whom are linked with elegant mathematical precision: God and suicide, food and poison, monks, athletes, soldiers and soccer players all take their places in the circle-dance. Absurdity, surreality and humor abound; death is the ultimate destiny, yet always the next story offers infinite ways of escape.
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Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
Part of The Zoran Živković Collection
Ten linked stories with resonant titles explore almost every conceivable aspect of human memory: the positive and the negative, the precious and the profane, the heavenly and the unbearably hellish. Zivkovic’s deceptively simple tales anatomize the essence of what makes human beings tick, our passions, our vanities and yearnings; the very memories which make us who we are.
Also included in Impossible Stories II.
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Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
Part of The Zoran Živković Collection
In this suite of eight stories, the three ages of woman—youth, midlife and senescence—engage in a complex and fruitful dance. A young Miss Tamara is lured by a series of postcards concealed in library books. A middle-aged Miss Tamara discovers that her new reading glasses turn the pages blank. An afternoon’s reading is disturbed by the realisation that all books have turned fatally toxic. A mysterious phone call leads to a book which blinds its readers but also to romance. Woven through these seemingly simple narratives are deep themes of youth and ageing, memory and loss, solitude and companionship, and the relationship between the physical and the mental life. Above all this is a book about reading: its pleasures, rituals, essential preciousness. Reading as an obsession which can not only isolate, but also lead to discovery and love.
Also included in Impossible Stories II.
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