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Impossible Stories II :: Zoran Živković

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Impossible Stories II

by Zoran Živković

Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić

Part of The Zoran Živković Collection


Zoran Živković’s second collection, bringing together a new set of fantastic, enthralling stories to delight you. Contains Four Stories Till the End, Twelve Collections, The Bridge, Amarcord, and Miss Tamara, the Reader.

Reviews

  • Živković masterfully filters memory and art through absurdism in this limited edition collection. …the collection, which neither has nor needs mainstream appeal; fans of Zivkovic’s unclassifiable quirkiness will quickly snap [it] up…
    —Publishers Weekly
  • …an elegant, perhaps even joyful, meditation on the existentialist’s main concern: if darkness shrouds the past, and darkness lies ahead, then what is the best response to this brief interval of light? Živković’s characters–all of whom with one exception have chosen, as the poet George Oppen wrote, “the meaning of being singular”–face their exits with curiosity and courtesy…
    —Anil Menon, Strange Horizons
  • The stories are consistently humorous yet concerned with a fairly grave subject, the afterlife. Only Peter S. Beagle’s work dazzles like Zivkovic’s.
    —Ray Olson, Booklist
  • Zivkovic rarely hits a wrong note or has a false step in the course of telling these stories, illustrating perhaps that sometimes a well-told tale just might still be one of the most effective ways of communication around.
    —Larry Holmes, Blog of the Fallen

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The Bridge :: Zoran Živković

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The Bridge

by Zoran Živković

Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
Part of The Zoran Živković Collection


What is the link between red hair, a red bowling ball and a red bikini? Between an overcoat with asymmetrical lapels, a scarf with two blotches and a pair of non-matching sneakers? In this brainteasing trio of stories, Zoran Živković explores the collision of realities: a man encounters an alternate self, a woman out on a shopping trip runs into her dead neighbor and a fourteen-year-old girl chases her seventeen-year-old future son across town. Through absurd predicament, surreal situations and hot pursuit, Živković addresses deep and ultimately poignant questions of fate and chance, the vagaries of human character and the hidden potential which lies within us all.

Winner of the 2007 Isidora Sekulić Award
Winner of the Golden Hit Liber Award (given by Serbian National Television to the most prominent prose book published in 2007)
Shortlisted for the 2007 NIN Award

Also included in Impossible Stories II.

Reviews

  • …this is more than a simple concept story. It’s rich and can be read on multiple levels. The so-called bridge appears multiple times, whether literally or metaphorically. The three disparate stories are also interlinked and keen readers will spot the clues and the details which kindles one’s sense of wonder…
    —Charles Tan, Bibliophile Stalker
  • …an exercise in puzzlement. It is a series of three linked stories; each story having a beginning, a middle, and an end. The stories are individually and collectively surreal, with a sense of randomness that wanders between the profound and the comedic, the implausible and the impossible.
    ‐Karen Burnham, Bookblips

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Twelve Collections :: Zoran Živković

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Twelve Collections

by Zoran Živković

Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
Part of The Zoran Živković Collection


What lies behind the human urge to collect things? What is the true psychology of the kleptomaniac? These questions bear on all of us; within every person there lurks a fanatical philatelist or a monomaniacal lepidopterist, just waiting to burst forth. In his new story cycle, Twelve Collections, Zoran Zivkovic, the master of mind-bending surreal fantasy, applies his fertile mind to this problem. Some of Zivkovic’s characters are lonely eccentrics, driven to gather unusual objects by quirks of temperament or fate; others are the victims of metaphysical collectors from Beyond, entities eager to snap up memories, emotions, and other loose fragments of the soul.

In these pages are explained the profound karmic consequences of photographic narcissism, insane record-keeping, the archiving of one’s nail clippings, and the infinite savouring of words; here also are exemplary warnings against surrendering hope, living without creativity, accepting too blithe a Heaven, and answering the phone in the middle of a dream-haunted night. Of course, even with such sage counsel, life remains uncertain and perilous; but even if ultimate answers can never be found, a Zivkovic collection is always eminently collectable…

Finalist in the novella category for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award
Longlisted for the 2008 British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novella
A five-part TV series, “The Collector,” produced in 2005 by the Belgrade-based Studio B Television, is based on this book.

Also included in Impossible Stories II.

Reviews

  • …characters living on the extreme margins, whose bizarre and obsessive behaviour crystallises deep truths for us. …each tale is a gem of ironic humour and, as always, Živković redeems everything at the eleventh hour with a climax of revelatory beauty. The short novella at the end of this collection, The Teashop, is a delightful bonus, a sort of distillation of the storytelling principle honed throughout the previous four books: endless storytelling as a form of redemption, even, for its protagonists, as a kind of immortality.
    —Tamar Yellin, Infinity Plus
  • …an amazing reading experience. …Each of these twelve stories comes together as a cohesive whole creating a wondrous and spectacular novella that will leave you breathless by the final tale.
    [The Teashop is] an inspiring tale that touches on the magic of storytelling and the far-reaching lines of fate’s web. …the perfect conclusion to a book filled with miracles and curiosities.
    —Joe Kroeger, Horrorworld
  • The crystalline prose of suite and stand-alone alike makes the stories exquisite to read.
    —Ray Olson, Booklist

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Four Stories Till the End :: Zoran Živković

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Four Stories Till the End

by Zoran Živković

Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
Part of The Zoran Živković Collection


In what strange edifice of the imagination do you find a condemned cell, a hotel room and a hospital room? What kind of hotel offers a zinc mine, a meat-packing plant, a weapons factory and a cemetery of famous artists among its attractions? Why do four people commit suicide in the same bathroom and why does a literature professor cut up several of the greatest works of literature into a confetti of letters? In this wildly imaginative, wildly funny satire on Art and Death nothing is quite what it seems and the maze of symbols grows more complex with each encounter.

Also included in Impossible Stories II.

Reviews

  • Živković continues his meditation on the nature and process of becoming an artist, but this time from a much darker and more satirical point of view. This is the most complex of all his story-suites, put together with the teasing intricacy of an Escher drawing.
    —Tamar Yellin, Infinity Plus
  • …the pinnacle of both storytelling and strangeness, features four people, each interrupted in turn by guests who tell art-themed stories with delightful digressions…
    —Publisher’s Weekly

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    Compartments :: Zoran Živković

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    Compartments

    by Zoran Živković

    Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
    Part of The Zoran Živković Collection


    On a strange train journey, in a series of six compartments, a traveller experiences unpredictable encounters, culminating in a meeting of epiphanic power. Through a narrative of dreamlike sharpness Compartments taps into the fears and absurdities, the beauties and mysteries of the unconscious mind, to achieve a consummation both moving and full of hope.

    Includes a new essay on Compartments by British author Tamar Yellin.

    Reviews

    • …our hero travels through a surreal and allegorical sequence of compartments in much the same way as a mediaeval alchemist travels through the sequence of transformations that lead him to the Philosopher’s Stone. Once again, Živković has produced a thought-provoking story, and the fine translation by Alice Copple-Tošić gives no clue that the piece was not written by a native English speaker.
      —Cheryl Morgan, Emerald City
    • The story is written in a deceptively simple style, apparently with little attempt to be overly descriptive and yet full of telling details. The conductor is by far the best character, filled with yearning for the mysterious woman. …recommended to fans of the surreal.
      —Chris Butler, Infinity Plus

    Details

    • Pages: 152
    • Trim size: 5″ x 8″ (127mm x 203mm)
    • ISBN
      Hardcover: 978-4-908793-04-2
      Softcover: 978-4-908793-16-5
      Ebook: 978-4-908793-32-5
    • List Price
      Hardcover: US$20.00
      Softcover: US$9.00
      Ebook: US$4.99
    • Cover: Youchan Ito （Togoru Art Works）

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    Steps Through the Mist :: Zoran Živković

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    Steps Through the Mist

    by Zoran Živković

    Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
    Part of The Zoran Živković Collection


    Five women of various ages face, each in her own way, what seems to be the deterministic trap of Fate: a freshman in a girls’ boarding school with the strange ability to share other people’s dreams; a young woman in a straitjacket, desperately trying to locate a very particular future; a middle-aged skier refusing to be just a puppet on a string; an elderly fortune-teller with insufficient faith in her own trade; finally, an old lady whose very precious alarm clock is suddenly broken. And engulfing all of them, a strange mist through which no-one can see clearly…

    A November 2007 BookSense Notable Book
    Winner of the 2008 Gold Award for Superb Craftsmanship from the Detroit Club of Printing House Craftsmen

    Also included in Impossible Stories I

    Reviews

    • There is a deceptive simplicity to Živković’s characteristic stark settings, his ordinary if rather neurotic characters, and his elegantly mannered prose (translated impeccably as usual by Alice Copple-Tošić). We notice trends and patterns in the stories, how all those who encounter the mist of the book’s title, out of which knowledge of the future emerges, are women; ironic given women’s historic struggle to control their own fate. … Yet despite the patterns and the scientific references Živković’s works are to be felt more than known, as the stories themselves often remind us. One judges these mosaics not by how directly they address their concern, but by how completely they encompass it.
      —Matt Denault, Boomtron
    • [It] isn’t so much a literary work to be read as it is one to be reveled in. Like a great work of abstract art, this surrealistic novel–about five women who contend with fate in very different ways–is layered with subtle symbolism and nuance, and should be savored slowly.
      — Publisher’s Weekly
    • With this book, Zoran Živković demonstrates why he is one of the great, although unheralded, masters of the contemporary fantasy. Steps through the Mist is a must have for people who like their fiction a little surreal and a lot off center.
      —Rick Klaw, Revolutionsf.com
    • It’s a thoughtful, thought-provoking and I have to say faintly disquieting volume, one that raises the sort of questions about the way we move through our lives, and the predetermination or otherwise of our actions, that I for one find are best faced in the company of good friends and with the aid of a couple of bottles of good wine.
      —Ariel, Thealienonline.net
    • Another artful, mathematically perfect creation
      —Miranda Siemienowicz, Horrorscope

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    The Library :: Zoran Živković

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    The Library

    by Zoran Živković

    Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
    Part of The Zoran Živković Collection


    One of the most beloved “mosaic novels,” The Library presents a series of tales centered on our love of books—taken, at times, to extremes. A writer encounters a website where all his possible future books are on display; a lonely man faces an infinite flow of hardback books through his mailbox; an ordinary library turns by night into an archive of souls; the Devil sets about raising standards of infernal literacy; one book houses all books; a connoisseur of hardcovers strives to expel a lone paperback from his collection.

    Winner of the 2003 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella!

    Also included in Impossible Stories I

    Reviews

    • Živković explores and fantasises about the relationship between author, text, and reader—but where a lesser talent would slip into self-indulgence, Živković combines authentic modesty and memorable imagery to create a set of worlds that linger in the reader’s memory.
      —Nicholas Whyte, Strange Horizons
    • …a cycle of six thematically linked stories, droll renditions of the nightmares ensuing upon misplaced, or (of course) excessive, bibliophilia. Živković is, as ever, polished, and frighteningly intelligent; book-lovers will recognize intimately the frissons and frustrations he evokes.
      —Nicholas Gevers, Locus
    • Živković piles invention on invention with unselfconscious ease.
      —Peter Loftus, Interzone
    • Like Jorge Luis Borges, he can create strange, alternate universes. Like David Lynch, he can balance menace and melancholy—be cruel and be funny at the same time.
      —Richard Wallace, The Seattle Times

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    Impossible Stories I :: Zoran Živković

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    Impossible Stories I

    by Zoran Živković

    Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
    Part of The Zoran Živković Collection


    Impossible Stories I is a collection of several of the author’s finest works, including Time Gifts, Impossible Encounters, Seven Touches of Music, The Library (winner of the 2003 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella), and Steps through the Mist. The perfect introduction to the incredible world of Zoran Živković.

    Seven Touches of Music, contained in this edition, was selected for the “Music and Literature Reading List” created by Michelle Johnson, managing and culture editor of the prestigious “World Literature Today” US monthly literary magazine.

    Reviews

    • …bursting with inventive scenarios, imaginative writing, and unforgettable characters.
      —World Literature Today
    • Why isn’t Zoran Živković better known in this country? He possesses an imaginative ingenuity and charm similar to that of, say, Paul Auster or Italo Calvino, with bits of Kafka, Borges and Beckett mixed in… the narrative seductiveness of Zivkovic’s “impossible stories” remains distinctly his own. Open one of his books and prepare to be enchanted.
      —Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book Review
    • …each of his novellas seems to spring from a single philosophical question. … Dreams, time-travel, reincarnation, storytelling: these are the building blocks of Živković’s stories. He forces us to think deeply about the act of writing and creation, and how the line between “reality” on the page and off is just a hazy shadow, and maybe only exists because we will it to. If these stories sound very “Borgesian,” then I’ve managed to convey their unique strangeness to you.
      —Rachel Cordasco, Speculative Fiction in Translation
    • Impossible Stories might be approached as if one were inspecting a handsome piece of furniture, a cabinet in which each of any number of regularly sized and shaped drawers is built precisely to contain and to somehow exemplify its own metaphysical freight or uncanny puzzle, and it is in the rhythm and variety of the whole, too, that the nature of Živković’s craft can be apprehended and enjoyed.
      —Tony White, Wasafiri
    • …even though they own and use computers, Živković’s characters seem decidedly nineteenth century. They are as intelligent and as neurotic as Poe’s personae, and admirers of that master of the outre–or of Borges, Gogol, Capek, and Lem–will be enthralled by them.
      —Ray Olson, Booklist
    • …well worth reading for the ingenuity of Živković’s stories. He is extraordinarily clever and has a particular talent for devising awkward moral dilemmas for his characters. His writing is also … quite unlike that of anyone else.
      —Cheryl Morgan, Emerald City
    • …a rare masterpiece that achieves its objective with fluent and calculated flair.
      —Miranda Siemienowicz, Horrorscope

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    Seven Touches of Music :: Zoran Živković

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    Seven Touches of Music

    by Zoran Živković

    Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
    Part of The Zoran Živković Collection


    Seven stories about moments of divine revelation through music, which leave no mark beyond the ephemeral instant of their perception: a teacher whose autistic ward inexplicably writes down one of the fundamental values of theoretical physics; a librarian whose dream of the Great Library is reenacted upon her computer screen; a man who buys a music box that when played provides a glimpse into his alternative life; an elderly woman that, hearing a hand organ in a train station, begins to have visions of the death of everyone she encounters; a retired SETI scientist who, despite having no real interest in art, suddenly begins to paint a strange first contact signal; a dying professor who finally has a chance to hear in the form of music the answers to the ultimate questions; and a violin-maker’s apprentice who knows the truth behind his master’s mysterious suicide.

    Winner of the Award of Excellence in the General Trade Category at the 55th Annual Chicago Book Clinic Book and Media Show

    Also included in Impossible Stories I

    Reviews

    • In both form and theme, Seven Touches of Music is most reminiscent of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics or Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams — with just a dash of Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. These novels span the gamut of magical realism and literary fiction…
      —Matt Denault, Boomtron
    • …music—like fiction—provides a portal through which to perceive reality, [but] how little we understand the insight it may provide…. an autistic student writes down a complex mathematical concept of theoretical physics only when Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F Minor, Opus 21, is played in class. The mathematician whom the teacher consults to determine what the numbers written down by student mean says, “it must be God Himself who whispered them to you because at this moment only HE is able measure after the eleventh significant feature.”
      —David Soyka, The New York Review of Science Fiction
    • Seven Touches of Music insinuates an imp into a variety of mundane environments. That imp is music: somewhere a melody plays; revelations are vouchsafed; and consternation follows. An autistic child veers into truly inexplicable abstraction; a woman has a powerful dream of the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria; a widower spies his alternate self; an old lady becomes selectively, morbidly, prescient; an astronomer senses subliminal alien communications; the dying Einstein completes the ultimate puzzle; a violin-maker confronts the perfect violin. Živković explores here the ambiguity of all knowledge, the perverse destructiveness of wish-fulfillment.
      —Nick Gevers, Locus
    • As might be expected of a European academic trained in literary theory, Živković mingles postmodern flourishes—self-reflexivity, deconstructionist ruminations—with the materials of speculative fiction. Overall, he perhaps most strongly resembles Italo Calvino in the latter’s fantastic vein. Surrealism, incongruous introspection, teasing narrative geometries, and startling systems of hyperbolic wit shape and illuminate his yarns, lending them an Escheresque elegance.
      —Nick Gevers, Locus
    • One thinks, indeed, of Ligotti, of Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zann,” but also of Sagan’s Contact and Lem’s Solaris. The mystery, expressed metaphorically as music, defies humanity’s limitations. Mr. Adam, in “The Puzzle,” asks, “What if extraterrestrials exist and are communicating, but we don’t recognize it? What if they are doing it in some other way, not the way we presumed?”
      Given Živković’s fondness for metafiction, these quiet, subtle, elegant stories are both the question, and the answer.
      —Darrell Schweitzer. The New York Review of Science Fiction

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    Impossible Encounters :: Zoran Živković

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    Impossible Encounters

    by Zoran Živković

    Translated from Serbian by Alice Copple-Tošić
    Part of The Zoran Živković Collection

    Six strangely related stories about six encounters that could or should have never happened. A post mortem encounter with a clerk who has a most bizarre offer; an elusive encounter with oneself, only decades older; a seemingly innocent encounter with a bookshop visitor who is desperately looking for an ordinary SF story; a memorable encounter with God in a train which, unfortunately, has to be forgotten; a dreamlike encounter with Devil in a Church as a first step on a road which doesn’t lead to Hell; finally, a forbidden encounter of a dying author with one of his protagonists who brings an impossible book as a gift.

    Stories from the book have been published in the UK (Interzone: February, May, July, September, October, November and December 2000), in the USA (Year’s Best Fantasy anthology, Harper-Collins, 2001), in Poland (the magazine Nowa Fantastyka, July 2000), and in Japan (an anthology of the Middle European “fantastika”, 2011).

    The story “The Train” was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on 29 September 2005.

    Also included in Impossible Stories I

    Reviews

    • Impossible Encounters is a series of tales about, well, impossible encounters. The first line of “The Window” is “I died in my sleep.” It then proceeds to recount what happens thereafter…
      —David Soyka, The New York Review of Science Fiction
    • As might be expected of a European academic trained in literary theory, Živković mingles postmodern flourishes—self-reflexivity, deconstructionist ruminations—with the materials of speculative fiction. Overall, he perhaps most strongly resembles Italo Calvino in the latter’s fantastic vein. Surrealism, incongruous introspection, teasing narrative geometries, and startling systems of hyperbolic wit shape and illuminate his yarns, lending them an Escheresque elegance.
      —Nick Gevers, Locus
    • The stories carry about them the feel of myth, of primal, perhaps archetypal, confrontation. Although the reader may not be aware of it as he or she progresses through the book, it becomes clear in retrospect that Živković has consciously built towards his final story.
      —Michael Levy, The New York Review of Science Fiction
    • Encounters that are impossible, encounters that are from beyond the boundaries of what we have decided is reality and possibility, and yet remain within the realms of what we call ordinary. They’re quiet and soft in the nature of the extraordinariness. Subtle, delicate, and unassuming.
      —Tessa, Silence Without

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