The White Room :: Zoran Živković

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The White Room

by Zoran Živković

Translated from Serbian by Randall A. Major
Part of The Zoran Živković Collection


Ivana has gone missing…
With her disappearance there begins a fantastical adventure for Professor Zoran Živković, author and teacher of creative writing. Assisted by Senior Inspector Sanja Mrvaljević of the Belgrade police, military counterintelligence, the National Security Agency and ultimately Interpol, the search for Ivana grows into a comic nightmare of unforeseen proportions. For why and how do a series of mysterious videos, in which Ivana plays the starring role, reach Professor Živković’s inbox, and why are their settings at once strangely familiar and unfamiliar? How will he escape the web of suspicion which weaves implacably about him, and will he and Ivana ever be reunited?

Once again, this time in the ultimate sense, Živković explores the trickeries and mysteries of the creative process, in a book that is gripping, hilarious, touching and more revealing than any he has yet written.


Reviews

  • …another quite successful variation on his familiar themes. … It’s another clever addition to an extensive library that should appeal particularly to book-lovers drawn to fiction that explores the interplay of writing, reading, and living.
    Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review
  • …a farewell to creative writing in the form of a piece of creative writing linking all [Živković’s] earlier works into a vast creative meta-oeuvre. Most powerful in its paradoxical nature!
    —Nick Gevers
  • …a very personal merging of heart and mind, of inspiration and the creative process, a moving portrait of an author’s vision of his own life and writing…. a combination of Roald Dahl charming and Jorge Luis Borges fabulist, all within the tradition of Middle-European Gogol/Bulgakov/Kafka fantastica.
    Glenn Russell on Goodreads

Details

  • Pages: 208
  • Trim size: 5″ x 8″ (127mm x 203mm), with dj
  • ISBN
    Hardcover: 978-4-908793-53-0
    Softcover: 978-4-908793-54-7
    Ebook: 978-4-908793-55-4
  • List Price
    Hardcover: US$25.00
    Sofrtcover: US$12.50
    Ebook: US$7.99
  • Cover: Youchan Ito (Togoru Art Works)

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Ciuleandra :: Liviu Rebreanu

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Ciuleandra

by Liviu REBREANU

Translated from Romanian by Gabi REIGH


Written in the interwar period and published in 1927, this psychological thriller has captured the imagination of Romanian readers ever since. The book begins with a murder, as Puiu, a young aristocrat, strangles his wife on the night of the royal ball. To avoid a public trial and prison sentence, his father arranges to have him committed to a mental asylum.

Puiu’s discussions with his psychiatrist force him to confront his conscience and lead him to trace the root of his murderous passion to a wild, Dyonisian peasant dance called the Ciuleandra, where he first glimpsed his future wife. Unfortunately for Puiu, though, his psychiatrist may have more than a professional interest in the case…

This story of obsessive love paints a fascinating picture of the changes in Romanian society at the beginning of the 20th century. The work echoes the cultural landscapes evoked by Russian writers such as Dostoevsky and Gogol, as moments of high drama and emotional intensity bring to life the complex relationship between a decaying aristocracy and the rural world.

The first chapter of this new translation of Ciuleandra was longlisted for the John Dryden Translation Prize, awarded by the British Comparative Literature Association.


Details

  • Pages: xviii + 171
  • Trim size: 5″ x 8″ (127mm x 203mm)
  • ISBN
    Softcover: 978-4-908793-49-3
    Ebook: 978-4-908793-50-9
  • List Price
    Softcover: US$17.00
    Ebook: US$5.99
  • Cover: Daniele Serra
  • Download sellsheet (PDF)

Reviews

  • Ciuleandra is an enjoyable tale, what with its mix of murder, guilt, and obsession — and, above all else, the losing of the self in the moment, in something like the Ciuleandra (or murder …).
    Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review

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About the author
Liviu Rebreanu (1885–1944) was a member of a group of writers responding to the changes in Romanian society after the First World War. His 1932 novel The Uprising documents the peasant uprising of 1907, highlighting the class divisions in Romanian society and inspiring sympathy for the rural poor. Danse Macabre remains a popular novel in Romania, and the film adaptation was longlisted for the Best Foreign Film Award at the Oscars in 1985.


About the translator
Gabi Reigh was born in Romania and moved to the UK in her teens. She has won the Stephen Spender prize for poetry in translation and is currently engaged in a translation project called ‘Interbellum Series’ focusing on works from the Romanian interwar period. The first titles in this series were Poems of Light by Lucian Blaga and three works by Mihail Sebastian: The Town with Acacia Trees, Women and The Star with No Name.

The Sorrow of Miles Franklin beneath Mount Kajmakcalan :: Ivan Capovski

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The Sorrow of Miles Franklin beneath Mount Kajmakčalan

by Ivan ČAPOVSKI

Translated from Macedonian by Paul FILEV


In the latter years of World War I, renowned Australian writer Miles Franklin travels to the Macedonian Front, joining as a nurse at the Scottish Women’s Hospital near Mt. Kajmakčalan. Soldiers from many nations surge across a Macedonia that has been partitioned, absorbed by its neighbors. Its people struggle to survive in the face of staggering losses and being forcibly conscripted into foreign armies fighting on their soil.

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The Narcissism of Death :: Svetozar Savic

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The Narcissism of Death

by Svetozar SAVIĆ

Translated from Montenegrin by Vuk TOŠIĆ


Arrested for the suspicious death of his mother, “Bernard Novak” explains himself, in court and in prison:

Spending the night by chance in a seedy hotel near a quiet cemetery, he hears the laughter and moans of a couple having sex in a nearby room. Unexpectedly excited by the event, he watches as they leave… and falls in love with the beautiful woman, whom he immediately names M (for Midnight).
He recalls that he has seen the man before: Joko, a minor functionary in the government.

But why her? And why apparently in secret at an unknown hotel?
Obsessed with her, he tries to uncover her secrets. He arranges to “bump into her” at the dime store where she works, and she introduces herself, amazingly, as M! He continues unobtrusively stalking her, expanding their interaction until finally she writes her Skype handle on a newspaper he buys. The long talk begins, stretched over weeks of careful online conversation, gradually winning her trust at a distance, only to have his hopes shattered by his old, sick mother, who constantly claims new illnesses to worry herself and him about.

Their budding relationship shrivels and in despair he reaches out to M once again, in truth. And M comes to his home for dinner…


Details

  • Pages: 168
  • Trim size: 5″ x 8″ (127mm x 203mm)
  • ISBN
    Softcover: 978-4-908793-43-1
    Ebook: 978-4-908793-48-6
  • List Price
    Softcover: US$13.00
    Ebook: US$5.99
  • Cover: Mike Dubisch

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About the author
Svetozar Savić: I was born and lived briefly in Nikšić, Montenegro, in a pink apartment on Serdar Šćepana Street. A significant portion of my inspiration can be traced back to there, although I spent part of my youth in Novi Sad and Belgrade, Serbia, where I received a degree in biotechnology. I finally settled down in Bar and Podgorica, Montenegro. The South is for me; I’m a Mediterranean in both body and soul—the ambivalence of heat and storm.
I believe that I can make a contribution to literature. I grew up with it and it doesn’t mind poverty. The Grape-Stomping Vat was my first novel, containing short stories in the form of a novel, shaped by Vin de liqueur in the Square of Arms in Kotor, thematically cyclic, with a symbolical title The Chronicles of a Grape-Stomping Vat. The Sculptor, my second novel, is about sculpting one’s own life and those of others. It was nominated as the Montenegrin candidate for the Meša Selimović Award in Bosnia and Herzegovina.


About the translator
Vuk Tošić (1976–) was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, to American-Serbian parents and raised bilingual. After much meandering, he enrolled in engineering at the University of Belgrade, before finally entering the field of translation. His professional focuses are literary and drama texts, academic papers, socially engaged projects… and when that’s done—he takes his dog and camera on adventures. He is a member of the Association of Literary Translators of Serbia, but carries around the unconfessed aspiration to someday become a 21st century Renaissance man.

A Biography of a Chance Miracle :: Tanja Maljartschuk

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A Biography of a Chance Miracle

by Tanja MALJARTSCHUK

Translated from Ukrainian by Zenia TOMPKINS


A Biography of a Chance Miracle explores the life of Lena, a young girl growing up in the somewhat vapid, bureaucracy-ridden and nationalistic Western Ukrainian city of San Francisco. Lena is a misfit from early childhood due to her unwillingness to scorn everything Russian, her propensity for befriending forlorn creatures, her aversion to the status quo, and her fear of living a stupid and meaningless life. As her friends enter college, Lena sets forth on a mission to defend the abused and downtrodden of San Francisco—be they canine or human—armed with nothing more than an arsenal of humor, stubbornness, chutzpah and no shortage of imagination. Her successes are minimal at best, but in the process of trying to save San Francisco’s collective humanity, she may end up saving her own. At first glance a crazy and combative girl, Lena just may be the salvation that the Ukrainians of San Francisco sorely need.

…a wonderful novel by one of the most talented and original contemporary Ukrainian literary voices — Tanja Maljartschuk. You will irresistibly fall in love with the young protagonist, Lena, with her courage to face the harsh realities of life in her country, her charmingly optimistic and occasionally witty stubbornness in opposing the social forces of dominance and governance, and her idealistic determination to create a better world…—Zoran Živković, World Fantasy Award winner

With haiku-like precision, Tanja’s deceptively simple writing style blends surrealism and magical realism with satirical wit, occasionally outlandish humor and poignant social commentary. The German literary media has described her depictions of contemporary Ukraine as full of humor and absurdity, but “more exact and harsher” than those of her peers, comparing her to the 19th-century Russian satirist Saltykov-Shchedrin and hailing her as “a name to be remembered.” This work, her most provocative to date, was a finalist for the 2012 BBC Book of the Year Award in Ukraine, and has been lauded as “simply ingenious” by fellow Ukrainian authors.

Winner of the 2018 Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, the top prize at the Festival of German-Language Literature, for her short story “Frösche im Meer.” This literary event, held annually in Klagenfurt, Austria, recognizes outstanding works in the German language, and this year Tanja Maljartschuk took the top prize at the event with the very first story she has written in her second language, German.


Reviews

  • Maljartschuk … reminds us that multiple layers of oppression can exist at once and that victims can also be executioners. Certainly, there is a hierarchy of needs, but the “smallest” ones are often a litmus test of society’s true values. Violence seeps down to the humblest levels…
    —Ali Kinsella, World Literature Today
  • …Zenia Tompkins’ translation delivers A Biography of a Chance Miracle to English speaking readers in its full quirky, irreverent, breezy and occasionally merciless splendor. […] a collection of stories that appear unnoteworthy at first glance, but swell and fill the imagination as one reads them. The final twist is both perfectly surreal and perfectly logical in a book whose hero’s stubborn faith—in herself, if nothing else—is nothing short of magic.
    Nina Murray, Compulsive Reader
  • I loved Maljartschuk’s prose and writing style because it is poignant yet subtle and humorous at the same time… The translation also needs to be commended, since the prose flowed effortlessly and all the cultural references were presented in a friendly way to those who may not be familiar with the Ukrainian culture.
    Akylina Printziou, The Literary Sisters
  • This is Maljartschuk’s first novel in English and an excellent one it is too, showing with humour and a serious approach the problems of modern-day Ukraine but the courage and, at times, foolhardiness of a young woman who tries to combat them.
    The Modern Novel
  • …a masterpiece of dark and gruesome humor – a book you won’t forget!
    Residenz Verlag (for the German edition)
  • …an appealing take on modern-day Ukraine, and a nice little life-of tale. … a vivid and entertaining story, with just enough poignancy to it.
    —M.A.Orthofer, The Complete Review
  • While A Biography of a Chance Miracle focuses very much on the young woman, the novel is really all about Ukraine in the post-Soviet era. Maljartschuk sets her character against a backdrop of a country where in order to survive, the people need to become resourceful and independent as quickly as possible. … One of the strengths of A Biography of a Chance Miracle is its light touch, with what could have been a grey tale enlivened by humorous touches.
    —Tony Malone, Tony’s Reading List
  • It’s well written, a fascinating peek into history and a part of the world many might not be aware of. Weird and surreal, yet subtle.
    Christine Morgan’s World of Words
  • …it is this second part of the book that makes this book so worthwhile. Lena’s struggles against the system are very well told, not least because Lena stands up to the system but does not always succeed and does not always behave in an exemplary manner. The background to the whole novel – the corruption, greed, incompetence, indifference, bureaucracy, brutality – all the faults that Maljartschuk sees in contemporary Ukraine – help illustrate and justify Lena’s stance.
    The Modern Novel
  • …wise, loving and absurd.
    —Ericka Achermann, St. Galler Tagblatt, Switzerland
  • …Kafka and Thomas Bernhard send their regards…
    —Erich Klein, Falter Magazine, Austria
  • Here irony turns into sarcasm, the smile on your lips freezes… This is a wonderful and at once bitter book, a screaming indictment in prose…Lena rises above this tristesse, a female Don Quixote of the humiliated and affronted, like a hovering Chagallian angel…
    —Sabine Berking, Das Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin (FAZ), Germany
  • …a great talent has entered onto the stage of world literature here!”
    —Anne Hahn, Kiez-Ticker, Germany
  • With a surprisingly laconic wisdom, the young author manages to expose the entire absurdity of today’s Ukraine… A new strong voice—which, despite its youth, has already found its own style—has entered the literary scene here…
    —Andreas Pittler, Culturmag, Germany

Details

  • Pages: 234
  • Trim size: 5″ x 8″ (127mm x 203mm)
  • ISBN
    Softcover: 978-4-908793-41-7
    Ebook: 978-4-908793-42-4
  • List Price:
    Softcover US$20.00
    Ebook US$8.99
  • Cover: Joe Reimer
  • Download sellsheet (PDF)

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About the author
Tanja Maljartschuk is one of the most prolific and audacious young authors currently writing in Ukrainian, whose hallmark style blends searing social commentary with heartwarming humor and an appreciation for the human condition. The author of eight books of prose, her work has been translated into ten languages and is widely available in German. Tanja’s writing has been supported by various governmental and private fellowships from the Chancellery of Austria, the Academy of the Arts of Berlin, the Polish Ministry of Culture and KulturKontakt Austria, among others. She is a past winner of the Joseph Conrad Korzienowski Literary Prize (Poland-Ukraine) and the Kristal Vilencia Award (Slovenia). A Biography of a Chance Miracle, Tanja’s first novel and sixth book, was a finalist for the prestigious BBC Book of the Year Award in Ukraine, an award she subsequently won in 2016 for her novel Forgottenness. Individual stories of Tanja’s are available in English in the anthologies Best European Fiction, Herstories and Women in Times of Change, as well as in literary magazines such as World Literature Today (“The Demon of Hunger”), Words Without Borders, Belletrista (“Canis Lupus Famliaris”) and Apofenie (“Losers Want More”). A Biography of a Chance Miracle is Tanja’s first book to be made available in English; an English translation of her novel Forgottenness is in progress.


About the translator
Zenia Tompkins holds graduate degrees from Columbia University and the University of Virginia and began translating after fifteen years in the education and private sectors. She is the founder of The Tompkins Agency for Ukrainian Literature in Translation (TAULT), a nonprofit literary agency and translation house. This, her first translation, won the 2017 Kovaliv Fund Prize, a biennial American award for best translation of a Ukrainian work. Zenia is proficient in eight languages and translates exclusively from Ukrainian. She currently lives in Latin America as the spouse of a U.S. Foreign Service Officer.

Image Interpreter :: Zoran Živković

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The Image Interpreter

by Zoran Živković

Translated from Serbian by Randall A. Major
Part of The Zoran Živković Collection


In a carriage of the Paris metro, nine people cross paths one ordinary Friday morning: a retired office worker who comes there purely to read; a tourist revisiting the memories of sixty years ago; a funeral mourner who has discovered the beauty of cemeteries; an author in search of her characters; a young man with a reality problem; an elderly woman with memory issues; a military administrator with a secret hobby; a jilted woman who has the key to the perfect match; and a secret agent high on adrenaline. Each in turn encounters that ubiquitous and unavoidable gadget: the cell phone camera. Each comes to a realization that changes their life forever. But who is the tenth person in the carriage, and what do her photographs tell her about the other nine that they could not possibly know themselves?

 

The author’s latest masterpiece, finally available in English!
Long-listed for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award


Reviews

  • One of the dangers of Živković’s fiction can be that one gets caught up in the clever construction, more concerned with how he’s going to pull it off than the actual substance, but there’s a lot of creativity and variety on display in these pieces, the stories, themselves. These are fun, unusual episodes, piece by piece, taking unusual turns and playing with a variety of interesting ideas, large and small. Meanwhile, the larger whole is satisfying too. Enjoyable entertainment, through and through.
    M.A.Orthofer, The Complete Review

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Hidden Camera :: Zoran Živković

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Hidden Camera

by Zoran Živković

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


A quiet, somewhat neurotic undertaker spends his days caring for his exotic fish, and of course his silent bodies as they arrive. One day, quite out of the ordinary, he receives a ticket to the movies. The movie, however, turns out to be of him, apparently filmed without his knowledge! Convinced that he is being targeted by a TV reality show, he plays along, only to be dragged from one adventure to the next, in a fantastic journey that evolves into a story of love, of death, and of ultimate creativity.
And through his travails we discover new perspectives on our own roles in an increasingly insensitive and scripted world.

Hidden Camera was nominated for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.


Reviews

  • Živković surveys the shifting line between paranoid fantasy and legitimate threat in his mystifying novel. When the unnamed narrator, an undertaker, is invited to a private film screening, he’s surprised to see that the movie is one sustained shot of himself sitting on a park bench.
    Publishers Weekly
  • A short, meaty book, this is an antimodernist parable heavy enough for you to know you’ve absorbed real substance, yet ironic enough to ensure you don’t want to kill yourself when it’s over. [A] wonderfully sardonic writer whose idiosyncratic vision so thoroughly serves his bleak, absurdist sense of fun.
    Michael Moorcock, The Guardian
  • …a work of unexpected beauty and surprise. Živković 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.He marries the comic to the melancholic with an enviable balance and lightness of touch.
    Dan Hartland, Strange Horizons
  • Hidden Camera is a love story, a story of love and death; it is also a parable of creativity. Hidden Camera is typical of Živković’s circular narrative style: like a serpent swallowing its own tail, the last sentence of the story draws one straight back to the first. For Živković, the act of creation is an act of love.
    Tamar Yellin, Infinity Plus
  • An inherently compelling, exceptionally thought-provoking, and consistently entertaining read from beginning to end … unreservedly recommended for both community and academic library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections.
    Midwest Book Review

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The Zoran Živković Collection

The Zoran Živković Collection

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

Individual titles and formats

Softcover Ebook Hardcover
The Fourth Circle The Fourth Circle The Fourth Circle
The Book The Book The Book
Time Gifts Impossible Stories I Impossible Stories I
Impossible Encounters
Seven Touches of Music
The Library
Steps through the Mist
Only available in softcover from Dalkey Archive Hidden Camera Hidden Camera
Compartments Compartments Compartments
Four Stories Till the End Impossible Stories II Impossible Stories II
Twelve Collections
The Bridge
Miss Tamara, the Reader
Amarcord
Escher’s Loops Escher’s Loops Escher’s Loops
The Writer & The Ghostwriter The Writer & The Ghostwriter The Writer & The Ghostwriter
The Five Wonders of the Danube The Five Wonders of the Danube The Five Wonders of the Danube
The Last Book The Papyrus Trilogy The Papyrus Trilogy
The Grand Manuscript
The Compendium of the Dead
The Image Interpreter The Image Interpreter The Image Interpreter
The White Room The White Room The White Room

The Compendium of the Dead :: Zoran Živković

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The Compendium of the Dead

by Zoran Živković

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.


Reviews

  • This third variation on powerful books (and the power behind them) allows Živković to bring the trilogy almost full-circle, and tie up some loose ends in setting everything right — the havoc that a writer wreaks put back in order. It’s a decent, clever idea, and certainly makes for an agreeable conclusion. … The Papyrus Trilogy forms a nicely rounded whole.
    Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review
  • Zoran Živković is more interested in books and how they are made than in hard-boiled detectives and how they detect. Not for everyone perhaps, but good fun…
    —David Cozy, Only A Blockhead

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The Grand Manuscript :: Zoran Živković

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The Grand Manuscript

by Zoran Živković

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.


Reviews

  • It begins with him being called to a writer’s apartment by her desperate literary agent, who fears the worst. At the writer’s apartment they find the door locked—from the inside—but no one answering. Lukić inexplicably finds no trace of the author—a classic locked-door mystery. … Appearances—and their absence (such the pseudonymous missing author)—are nicely constantly deceiving here, making for an enjoyable enough read.
    Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review
  • Once again Živković’s bookish world is fantastic. But then books can endow their characters with immortality, so maybe it’s not as fantastic as all that. Like the first book in the trilogy, this book can stand on its own, but it is inextricably connected to the first, and some of the philosophical fun will only be apparent to those who’ve read both.
    —David Cozy, Only A Blockhead

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